Because there is something we’re not really dealing with in Homoland. It’s not HIV, but I’d argue a lot of our new HIV infections are caused by it.

I’m talking about the generally poor state of gay men’s mental and emotional health. Britain’s Attitude magazine recently did a story on it, which got picked up by The Observer. I see no reason to doubt the situation is any different here, in fact what I know of my own life and the scene I move through confirms this for me.

A few weeks ago I was talking with a gay man here in Auckland about the same problems. Gay men have higher than average rates of depression, of drug and alcohol dependency, of STIs, of emtoional and mental health issues in general, and, tragically, of suicide.

Yet it’s a topic we don’t seem willing or able to address.

I’ve been to far too many funerals of friends who have committed suicide. And I confess, it’s something I’ve thought about often myself. That began for me as a teenager, realising I was gay at 14 or 15, and thinking it was the worst possible thing in the world and that I couldn’t possibly find a way to live with it, that my life would be marred by shame and isolation, that I’d be rejected by my family, that I’d never find someone to love me - all those horrible and destructive thoughts weighed down on me as I look at the world around me, and only saw gay men portrayed as sick, sad perverts to be laughed at or attacked. At 16 I went around for several months with a razor blade in my pocket, wondering if I should use it. I never did.

And suicide is a thought, a theme, that still sits with me, the idea that I could end my own life one day. Before anyone panics and calls in emergency counsellors, let me say, I have never actually made an attempt, or even planned it, and I’m fairly content and planning on staying around to piss people off for a while yet. But I’ve thought about it - especially in the worst days of what AIDS was doing to me in the 90s. And I know I am not alone in this.

But we don’t talk about it. Or when we do, a lot of guys seem to blame themselves, to wonder what they’ve done wrong, what it is about them that makes their lives this way.

It’s not us. That’s something I’m very clear about.

We live in a world that marginalises us and makes us fight for every scrap of acceptance we get. Yes there have been massive and important legal changes - but society in general is still not that friendly towards us. And most parents would tell you that if their son is gay they’ll “deal” with it, but even that  tells you it’s something they’d not choose for their son, it’s not their first, best option - it’s something that has to be coped with. Every time I read a news report about a teenage boy killing himself and family and friends are trying to understand the tragedy, saying how it doesn’t make sense, what a good student/sportsman/friend he was,  I always wonder “Was he gay? Was he like me at that age, but he actually did it?” And I’ve spoken to young gay men who have found the way their family reacted to their coming out so difficult they’ve embarked on behaviour I can only see as self-destructive, at times with terrible results - and yes, I do blame the parents to some extent in those situations. Your 19 year old son got HIV or killed himself? What did you do to set up his life so he wouldn’t? How did you react when he came out to you?

We live in a largely homophobic world, and that takes its toll. We rarely get to see positive images of gay men on TV, in film, in pop songs - and these things matter. If we can’t see ourselves in the everyday culture around us, and see ourselves depicted in a positive light, the unspken message is that we don’t count, that we are in fact not worth it, that we can’t have stories of love and happiness played on the radio or shown on the screen. That’s a deeply corrosive and harmful message. And as I’ve said before, when I talk to young gay guys coming out, they typically say that they want a boyfriend, but the gay scene offers them bars, drink, sex and drugs. We don’t seem to have the social infrastructure to offer them, or older guys, ways to meet and to be outside of highly sexualised settings. I love sex, love a party, as anyone who has been paying attention to knows, but they are the icing on the cake - not the cake itself - or they shouldn’t be.

Do we need an institutional response? These mental health issues are just as important as HIV, we do have a real mental health problem as a group, but as they are less visible they attract far less interest. Could the NZAF do more in this area? Not without extra funding, and just whether it is where they should be working is a debate in itself. Could we get a campaign like John Kirwan’s one on depression up and running?

I’m not sure what the answer is, I’m not sure how we make our world better for us and for the younger generations coming out, but I do think we need a conversation, I do think we need to start talking about it, and considering just what we can do.

Me. In the Urge Mr Leather competition last Friday. In case you were wondering.

Jamie Gates won, and deserved to, congratulations and have fun in Melbourne - he did really well. Murray and Mal, thanks, you were worthy foes. And while it was a contest of two rounds, I think we can say that leather was the winner on the night.

I haven’t written about sex in oh, at least an hour, so why not start again. Actually, it’s part of my job, doing my PhD, writing about sex and how gay men have sex - and I usually enjoy it - the writing I mean. Oh, and the fieldwork.

I’ve been thinking about what it was like when I was a baby-gay, back in the 70s when I was in my teens and coming out. Nearly all my initial contacts were sexual, until I was about 17 and started making gay friends, and as a teenage boy getting all that sex, I was very, very happy with that. Young, dumb and full of cum, as they say. Yes, I also wanted a boyfriend, and love, but like most teenage boys, I tended to think with my dick.

Suddenly there was a whole world of fun in front of me. And Gay Liberation actually had the message of sexual freedom at its core. We aren’t heterosexuals, so why form our social and sexual patterns on their models? If you want to go and fuck till sunrise every day, well why not? And a lot of guys did that.

That’s putting it a bit crudely, but there was a sense that we needed to move away from the judgmental and anti-pleasure aspect of so much of how the straight world saw us.There was a strong message of celebrating the body, celebrating the sexual. This didn’t mean you couldn’t fall in love and have a partner, but there was so much negativity about two (or more) men getting naked and having fun that Gay Lib thought it important to stress that there is nothing wrong with it.

Instead of the old message from society ‘You are evil sick perverts for doing that’ we took on a new “sex-positive” message instead, saying two (or more) men getting naked and having fun was a very good thing indeed - if that’s what you wanted. I remember at one of the first Gay Lib meetings I went to at uni being told how lucky we were as gay men - we could screw around as much as we liked and no-one would get pregnant, the worst that could happen was syphilis and that just needed some pills.

And then, along came AIDS.

And with it came a whole lot of finger-pointing and moralising, and an awful lot of people saw it as God’s punishment on filthy homos. Quite a lot of self-hating gay men did as well. And some still do - I’ve met them.

But there’s a mistake in  their logic. HIV can be transmitted by sex, but it’s not caused by sex.

Yet the old stupid, anti-pleasure messages keep coming through. I think NZ has quite a strong puritan streak to it - all those bloody missionaries had a bad effect. Christianity really doesn’t like anyone having a good time with their body. And I am surprised at how often I come across the attitude even today among some gay men, this idea that sex is bad, a sin, something that shouldn’t be talked about, shouldn’t be mentioned and the cause of all our woes. Then they disappear into a sauna, have sex, and feel terrible about themselves again. Sad really.

It doesn’t have to be like that! Sex is great ! Or it can be. No - It’s not the be-all and end-all of life, and sex is different from love, something a lot of gay men know very well. And when sex and love come together, well, that’s magic, that’s probably what we all want I guess. But even if I had the perfect partner, I suspect I’d still want to fuck around, and would expect it not to be a problem.

I’m still often utterly entranced by the random beauty of men I end up in bed with. Some are regular fuck-buddies, some are casual one-offs - but it’s rare that I end up naked with a guy and don’t find something beautiful and sexy in him. I hope that they feel the same way. And I know, I’m getting older, greyer, saggier, I’m not as desirable as I once was, but I don’t care too much.

It’s my body, and I like my body, and I like what I can do with it, and what can be done to it. And that’s enough for me.

I listened to a couple of guys I know the other day making jokes about lesbians. Not nice jokes. These were gay guys too, not idiotic straights - and it made me wonder: Why do some gay men seem to find lesbians hard to deal with?

So I guess I just want to say I like dykes. I have strong, intelligent, funny and kind lesbians in my life, and I think you’re great. You make my life richer.

Every now and then I get an email from some dating site I joined up and lost interest in, telling me someone has left me a message.

They’re usually from Ghana or somewhere in the old USSR, telling me how much they loved my profile and that distance is no obstacle to our love -  I don’t even bother checking those emails now. But thanks guys anyhow. I’ve looked at, and joined, and forgotten, a lot of sites over the years.

Just how many gay dating sites are there? Here in New Zealand nzdating has things pretty well sewn up, but gaydar can get pretty busy.  They’re all a bit different, but with a fair amount of crossover too. Damn, admitting I know that shows how much time I spend on them. Well, I did do my MA on gay men’s online sex-lives, I’m just maintaining my research interest, honest.

Let’s see - what comes to mind first? - NZDating, Recon, Gaydar, Gay.com, Grindr, Manhunt, BearWWW, Hairy Turks, GayRomeo, Squirt, Silver Daddies, Adam4Adam  - that’s just a little list, and they all have their own characteristics. Some seem to attract certain age groups, and some are designed to target certain groups. Some are more geographically specific, some are international. You can find sites for just about any kind of gay identity it seems: You’re a gay Mormon? There’s a dating site for you. You’re in your 20s but like guys in their 50s & 60s? Try Silver Daddies. Have you moved beyond vanilla sex? Recon.com should do you just fine. You’re a total Mac-geek? Grindr is already on your iPhone I’m sure.

 There are of course sites that deal only in bareback sex - you ‘d better know what you’re doing if you go to them. And we tend to call them dating sites, but let’s face it - most of the time they’re not. NZDating is widely known as NZFucking for good reason. But sometimes people do meet up on them and fall, not just into bed, but in love, and create a relationship. I’ve known men fly across the world for someone they’ve met online - always a bold move, and not one that always plays out so well. Then there are the sites like X-tube, not officially gay as such, and more about sexual display, but even there gay men reveal all sorts of strange things about themselves, often providing intimate glimpses into their lives and hearts along with the money-shot.

The net has changed so much of our social world. For gay men, I think it’s been a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s made it easier for a whole lot of guys in small isolated places to feel connected. It’s also made it easier to hook up. And it’s made it easier for a lot of guys who don’t like the gay scene, or who are deeply in the closet, to get a bit of nooky in their lives. And there can be a sense of community online, but I think it’s pretty thin. There are people on various sites I’ve been chatting to for ages, but will most likely never meet - I’m not sure I would want to spoil the illusion by letting reality intrude.

But I think it’s also had the unintended consequence of weakening the gay world. It does seem harder for bars and clubs, the traditional centres of urban gay life, to keep going. Without the need to actually hang out with a bunch of other homos, we get less of a sense of ourselves I think, we become a bit more isolated, a bit more fragmented.

And sometimes it just seems so lonely and hopeless, seeing so many men out there with their impossible wish-lists for their perfect partner. So many men, sitting at home, typing out messages to each other, opening up their hearts at times, sometimes just their flies, but so often expressing a real desire for affection, for connection and for love to some stranger. And then they meet - and then? As I said, I know some happy stories, but they seem to be in the minority. 

Apart from the lucky few, I don’t think life online is going to bring those things. We get this false sense of intimacy when we’re online, but you don’t really get to know people unless they’re sharing the same air as you, unless you can see them and hear them.

I won’t be going off the grid, but I do wonder just what it’s doing to us all at times.

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 publicly 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 been 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 Century 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: Today we see a restrictive, and often hypocritical level of adherence to “Christian” morals and compulsory heterosexuality largely underwritten by nutty American Christian fundamentalists.

The strangest part of the hypocrisy I see is the way they use the bible to justify their stance. yet it was the bible that was used to justify both slavery of Africans in general, and apartheid in the old South Africa: God had ordained that Blacks should serve Whites, or that was how they interpreted Genesis 9:25 - 27. I wonder if anyone has reminded them of this fact.

And I feel powerless to do anything meaningful. In the past I have boycotted products from countries I opposed, or written to their ambassador, or taken part in protests, but I really don’t know what to do here. I probably will write to someone there, expressing my anger and disgust.

It wasn’t that long ago that here in New Zealand I could have been arrested for this sort of thing. Every time I went to bed with a man in the pre-Law reform days I knew I was breaking the law. We’ve made huge gains, in both legal terms and terms of social acceptance. But what has been achieved can also be lost - don’t forget that. Seeing gays as a generally accepted part of the general NZ community is something quite new, and while we take it for granted, there are those who would like to see the same position that the judge in Malawi has taken employed here.

I’d just like us all to stop and think for a moment what it would be like to be in these men’s shoes. Imagine their bravery! Imagine their sorrow and despair now at this barbaric and unjust punishment.

Such an interesting set of reactions to my blog on BP, from enthusiastic to damning - no real surprise there.

Any group trying to support people with HIV has some major issues to deal with. In New Zealand we have somewhere between 1,500 - 2,000 people living with HIV. Across the entire country. This is a tiny population of infected people, and I am glad it is so small. If you look across the ditch at say Melbourne or Sydney, you have cities that hold larger populations than our entire country, and in each city you have thousands and thousands more HIV+ people than we have in the entire country. Having so many people in one city means they can provide services on a far more centralised and effective basis than we can ever do here. And hence they have far better organsed HIV+ peer-support groups; They have a much bigger population of HIV+ people in one space, and this makes their job far easier. Trying to provide the same level of service to someone in Gore as someone in Auckland is impossible. It’s brutal but it’s a fact.

Now let me be clear: I don’t want to see BP disappear. I want to see it become relevant and interesting again. Bruce claims there are over 500 people on their books: Well I’ve been on their books since 1994 or so, and so have a fair few others. Typically when you get diagnosed with HIV joining BP is suggested, and many guys do, but how many come back? I know guys who have joined, been along once or twice and never been back, or never even been to a single event organised by them. But they are  included in this number. And yes Bruce, I am still a member. Out of that 500+ how many hundred show up for the AGM? How many does BP manage to actively engage with? And sending out a newsletter is not active engagement.

I’d really like to see BP become safer for young HIV+ men. Twice in the last 12 months I’ve had people under 25 tell me they wouldn’t go back. One because he was hit on within 20 minutes of his first meeting there, the other because, and I quote, “It’s full of creepy old men.” When I mentioned the first young man’s complaint to a board member he just rubbished it. Not what I consider an appropriate response, in fact it is an entirely unacceptable one. Another newly diagnosed guy I met in his late 20s said he thought it was just boring.

Just who does BP speak for? At times it sounds as though it has a mandate to speak for all of us, gay, straight, male and female, but they simply do not have that authority. And again I’ll point to the repeated failure of attempts to set up a national body for people living with HIV in NZ. It has often come down to bitter fights between people from other centres who distrust BP and do not want to be swallowed up by an Auckland based entity. And trust me, some of these fights have been nasty - we’re not one big happy family just because we have the same virus in our blood. We can’t even get gay men who are HIV+ to come together as one national group. Straight men have completely different issues, so do women, so do various ethnic groups. Perhaps part of the problem is lazy journalists simply not looking any further, but it should be remembered that BP only represents BP.

And I think the central thing that makes BP’s job so hard is this: Where once having HIV meant getting AIDS and dying, and it was the most important thing in people’s lives, today this is less and less the case. And not just for old-timers like myself. Again I can think of men who got infected in the last two years who, after the initial shock, and often using some counselling, are simply getting on with their lives. How do you make BP relevant to them? Perhaps it’s not possible.

In some ways they’re caught between a rock and a hard place, yes, they do some things well,  but that doesn’t mean they are immune to criticism or to questioning. No one should be.

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 the recent appropriation of “queer”.

Yet many older gay people, especially older gay men, hate the term “queer”. For them it is associated with the fear, misery and bullying of their youth, but a lot of younger gay people seem to prefer it. And hard as it may be to believe now, “gay” itself was once a radical term to describe same-sex attracted people. Today it seems a bit boring and ordinary as a label, safe and conventional. The growing use of “fag” just shows the growing influence of American culture on us all. I never used to hear it when I was a teenager. And if you think it’s somehow based in the use of the bundles of sticks to burn homos at the stake, well, you’re wrong.

Many lesbians dislike “gay” because it’s seen as too closely tied to male issues and ignores them and the issues that go with being a dyke. And “dyke” was also reclaimed by lesbians in the same way I talked about above: for many “lesbian” seemed too technical, too clinical and dated.

Does it matter? Some people say “Don’t label me! Who I sleep with isn’t who I am!”: Yeah, well I think they’re just kidding themselves. Society labels us all the time. We live in a world of symbols and labels, everywhere, and how they are used can often have a deep political and personal effect. And my first reaction to those who reject any label based on their sexuality is that they still haven’t really come to terms with who they are.

So what about “queer” then? Well let’s start with this nice neat idea that there are two sorts of human sexuality - hetero and homo. A nice idea, but it’s flawed; there are all sorts of permutations and shades of grey in how and who humans fuck. If gay is solely for same-sex attracted people, then what about bisexuals? (They actually do exist). What about people who have differing gender identities from the norm? Transexuals or Intersexed people for example? They’re not gay, but they’re not straight either. “Queer is useful in being inclusive of all types of sexual/gender difference.

“Queer” also took strength as a label from academia, and the invention of Queer Studies in the last 20 years or so. Personally, it’s not a project I have a lot of sympathy for, but it has its place. The beauty of “queer” as a social identifier is that it gives space to those who are marginalised even within the gay world. If you call yourself “queer” you’re stating that you are sexually different, that you’re not straight, and that’s a useful tool to have. In New Zealand you will often see the letters LGBTTI used (Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Takatapui, Transgender, Intersex) and let’s face it - queer is easier if you’re trying to be that inclusive.But it also can cover so much ground that issues that it loses force; it sort of assumes too that everyone who is queer will share a common set of interests, and that just isn’t so. For instance, I’d argue most gay men have little interest or understanding of what it means to be a transperson. Their interests are not necessarily those that we fags share, beyond that of basic Human Rights.

Names can and do have the power to hurt or help us. Being abused by people on the basis of who we (or who they think we are) sexually attracted to can be deeply painful. But it’s fun to turn it round at times too. A while back at a cocktail party I was asked if I was married or  if my girlfriend was there and replied “No, I’m a cocksucker.” It made the party a bit more interesting.

And even while writing this I stopped at times and thought” Which word do I use here?” They are slippery things, nowhere near as neat and obvious as we’d like to think, but they matter now and will continue to.

I was interested to read this article on gaynz about the magazine “Collective Thinking” and how Body Positive (BP) and others view it and where it should be.

What’s the solution? I’m not sure. But we need to adapt to a very different world and a very different population of people living with the virus. BP, or any other group that claims it can speak for people with HIV needs to ensure they are relevant not just to one small group but to the majority. And that may be an impossible task, but it’s worth pointing out.

It’s easy for a lot of us to think that now we’ve got all those legal battles behind us, you know, we’re legal now, can’t be discriminated against for being a homo, can get a Civil Union if you want, to think that it’s just fine and dandy for everyone else who’s gay in the country, but as I’ve been reminded a few times lately, it’s not the case.

It’s pretty hard for most of us to avoid family and the impact they have on us. And if you’re queer, it can be really hard if the people you’ve grown up with and known since you were born freak out when they find out that you’re not going to follow the straight and narrow path they just assumed you would naturally take.

Family matters. Their opinions of us are important, even when they’re negative. And I don’t know why but I’ve heard quite a lot of stories recently from people who have had really shitty experiences with their families.

Outright rejection is the most obvious and hurtful. I am actually stunned to hear that people’s parents have refused to speak to them since they came out - this still happens today. And it can go on for decades, or till death in some cases. My parents were pretty shocked back in the 70s when I told them, and it took my Dad a long time to come round, but he did. Even then I was never excluded from the family, he and I just wouldn’t talk when we met at Xmas or birthdays. I was lucky, my brothers were great, and my Mum was able to adjust and after the shock of the news, there was no problem.

But I’ve been hearing such hideous nasty stories from so many people lately - it makes me realise how lucky I am. I just can’t imagine what it would be like to be totally cut off from family, but a number of people go through that, and it must be shit.

Then there’s the other form of family cruelty, where they never really accept you, but still see you, but refuse to acknowledge your partner, or demand you never talk about the important things in your life as a queer - what you do, where you go, who your friends are, why you have a broken heart. They only want to accept a limited, sanitised version of you, one that won’t embarass them in front of the neighbours or at work or in Church. And of course, it’s always your fault for the pain and embarrassment, not theirs. They’ve done nothing wrong, but they sit there stewing in guilt and silent condemnation. Man I’m lucky I didn’t have to put up with that. I thought we’d all got past that now, but I was wrong. It still seems surprisingly, and unhappily, common.

Another form I’ve been hearing about from people is when you think your brother or sister is fine with you being queer, their partner, wife or husband is cool with it, you go to their place for dinner, baby-sit the brats, then one of their kids turns out to be one of us - and bang! You’re a demon. And you mustn’t talk about it ! Even if your niece or nephew has come and talked to you about it. “Back off! This is something we’ll deal with ! Keep your nose out! And don’t you dare tell Mum and Dad!”

That response, to me, shows that in fact they were never really cool with you being a homo in the first place. They were able to put on a good front, they probably even really convinced themselves that they had no issue with queers - until their own offspring suddenly force themselves to confront the mess of bigotry that sits there like a leaking sewer under a nice tidy garden. In fact the brother or sister you thought loved and accepted you never really did; or why react this way?

And yet we listen to people constantly telling us that “The Family” or “Whanau” is the building block of society, the best safest place to be for kids, a warm sheltering place of love that will take you in no matter what. Yeah, right.

As I said, I have been lucky - a few nasty moments when I was a lot younger with my Dad, but we moved beyond that. And it’s easy for someone like me to think that things are so much better than they were.

But for a lot of people that’s not the case. They are rejected and emotionally abused by the people they should be able to trust the most. No one can exert the same power over us that family can. They know all the buttons to push in ways that others don’t. And when they turn on us, withdraw their support and love, leave us because suddenly we are sick scum in their eyes, the result is devastating for many, and the consequences can be terrible.

It’s good to remember that with all the legal and social gains we’ve made, it can still be a nasty cold unwelcoming and unloving world for a lot of us who don’t fit the straight model.