Mae West
When Mae West famously quipped, “a hard man is good to find”, she could not have envisaged the extent of the modern gay movement’s reliance on porn from mags to movies to the proliferation of domestic cam sites. She was a truly modern woman whose sexual awareness, electrifying satire, and forthright feminism were castigated by the moral majority in 1920s America.
Imprisoned on Devil’s Island for “corrupting the morals of youth”, Mae saw enough homosexuality to turn it into a play called The Drag. It was promptly dropped when she refused to rewrite it to please a nervous theatre manager.
For all her renown, she would have seen the gay porn now surfeiting the scene as pernicious. It is a revelation to look at her career again, which, she claimed, had “a redeeming social purpose”, and, in the light of this, to question where our present gay sexual obsessions are leading us.
A gay friend recently told me of visiting a gay couple he has known for a long time who did something that radically altered the way he had always regarded them. The guys got naked and started to have cam sex in their home for the benefit of interested online viewers, exhibiting themselves and their new-found pastime in a way that embarrassed him. It’s the thin edge of a hefty wedge, from this gleeful exhibitionism to an over-reliance on viewing porn which can make plain, honest sex in the real world seem less exciting.
I remember vividly years ago an interview with tv personality, journalist, soldier and spy, Malcolm Muggeridge. He was one of the first observers to enter the Nazi death camps with American forces when they were liberated. Muggeridge remarked on the stacks of pornographic literature they found in the personal quarters of the SS commandants, and evidence of their consumption of great quantities of alcohol. He said he believed the Nazi officers could only carry out the daily regime of horrific brutality in the camps because their finer senses were constantly blunted by alcohol. Porn and excessive drinking - ring any bells?
When I see on gay dating sites that a guy’s highest aspiration is to take part in an orgy or gang bang, or for porn and more porn, heedless of the consequences, I often think the gay movement so proudly built up since Stonewall is in danger from our excesses. Add drugs to the mix, and we really are in peril.
Which brings me back to Mae West ( 1893-1980 ), the child of a celebrated beauty and a streetfighter. Her name became as synonymous with sex as that of Marylin Monroe, but Mae was always her own woman, strong-minded, businesslike, and nothing like the dizzy blonde who drooled over a famous President. She was the herald of a healthier sexual revolution, explaining in her memoirs:
”I could say almost anything, do almost anything on a stage, if I smiled and was properly ironic in delivering my dialogue.
Mae’s most celebrated character, Diamond Lil, reflecting her own love of the precious stones, was fleshed out in a play and later a novel called, She Done Him Wrong. The book ends with her getting the man she desires, as always. In this instance it is Captain Cummings (of the Salvation Army) to whom her lips are “crushed hotly”. For his part, he has to admit
“…her diamonds were tiny meteors that shed sparks across the heaven of her voluptuousness!
Interestingly, British wartime pilots donned their ‘Mae West vests’ when flying Spitfires, while submariners had her image tattooed on their shoulders. Mae’s quips about all the men in her life and the life in her men inspired those in the grip of war without a whiff of pornography. Her message in an age of prudery was really as wholesome as that of a campaigner like Claire Rayner : sex is not shameful and is there to be enjoyed. What a contrast to the documented practice of the US Air Force who showed hardcore porn to their pilots during the Gulf War, to energise them just before unleashing air strikes on Iraq.
What we really need now, I believe, is a second Stonewall. It will not manifest itself as a riot this time, but come as a gradual shift in attitude, choosing real life over porno fantasies, and bringing to gay life a greater warmth and humanity. I truly believe we are privileged to be gay, and in the long haul can be peacemakers and inspire the rest of the world with our creative skills and imaginative power. For a start, ,where gay sex is concerned, let’s make it the Mae way.
By John Hartley
(c) Copyright 2010. All Rights Reserved.
