What's Worse: Being a Gay Male or a Heterosexual Female?

I'm still enfeebled by my sickness, and this is why I can't read anything very complex or demanding of intellectual investment.  Not reading anything at all is out of the question, so I picked up Neil McKenna's The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde. I will post the review of the book when I'm finished, but for now I wanted to discuss the differences between the oppression of gay men and of heterosexual women in the late 19th century.

I had always felt a lot of compassion towards Oscar Wilde. His trial and imprisonment are a shameful instance of late 19th-century European homophobia. However, only when I started reading The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde did I realize that there was somebody in the story who was victimized a lot more that Wilde. Somebody victimized in really atrocious ways by Wilde himself. I'm talking, of course, about Wilde's miserable wife Constance.

From quite a young age, as McKenna's book tells us, Wilde started looking for a woman to marry in order to provide for himself financially (he was only considering women with significant dowries) and preserve his respectability. The women he proposed to saw through him and refused the offer. When Wilde met Constance, however, he was in luck. As a child, she had been a victim of horrific abuse at the hands of her mother. I think there might be a possibility that Constance was brain-damaged from the abuse, but that's just my opinion based on what I have learned of her behavior as an adult. Constance's relatives wanted to get rid of her, so nobody opposed her marrying the flamboyantly gay Wilde.

Constance's treatment at the hands of her husband was really nasty. He got her pregnant twice, while complaining to everybody who would listen how ugly, smelly, fat, deformed, and disgusting the pregnancies made her. He insisted on sharing intimate details of their sexual relations even with casual acquaintances. He brought a steady stream of his male lovers into the house to be entertained and fed by an unsuspecting Constance. He spent her money freely on his whims, while lecturing Constance on the need to save and be careful with money. But there is worse.

Wilde, who spent his entire life pontificating about the importance of sexual fulfillment and pursuing said fulfillment for himself at any cost, denied it completely to his wife. This young woman was used and discarded by Wilde. At a young age, she discovered herself rejected sexually by her husband and prohibited from looking for fulfillment elsewhere. The tragedy of that doesn't bear thinking about. Wilde, who was so appalled at the constrictions placed on male homosexuality, never stopped to consider that there was somebody a lot worse off living in the same house with him. Even at a risk of punishment, Wilde and his friends still had very rich and fulfilling sex lives. Constance, however, had nothing of the kind.

We are schooled to pity Wilde, who spent his life travelling, practicing his art, spending time with friends and lovers, throwing around huge sums (often of Constance's) money, and pursuing his sexual happiness in any way he could. What about Constance, however? What did her life hold for her? Marriage to a man who saw the female body as ugly, who despised her and referred to her as boring and stupid. Sitting at home alone with two babies and waiting for her husband to show up with one or few of his lovers in tow. Being the joke of the entire country that knew the role she played in Wilde's wife. No job, no interests of her own, no sex life. And it's Wilde we are sorry for? Wilde was fortunate enough to have a set of political beliefs that he defended at a huge risk to himself. He was unfairly punished for that with a two-year imprisonment. Constance, however, had been imprisoned for much longer. And she didn't even have the consolation of suffering for some valuable ideal. From Constance's letters, we know that she had dreams of a career of her own, hopes of a life filled with learning, friendships, personal fulfillment. None of that came to be because Wilde needed a silent domestic slave. 

The story of Oscar Wilde and Constance Lloyd demonstrates that gender oppression was always the worst kind of oppression that existed. Even if one was gay, as long as he was male, he had a variety of rights and opportunities that women had no access to. Even today, we keep perpetuating the idea that women are worth less than men by professing compassion towards Wilde and forgetting about Constance Lloyd's suffering.

Gay Activist Kidnapped by Authorities in Russia



Alekseev is dragged away by the police during a peaceful gay pride
event he organized

 The most famous gay activist in Russia, Nikolai Alekseev, has been detained by Russian authorities in the Domodedovo airport when he was trying to leave the country on business.

Russian authorities have been pressuring Alekseev to get him to withdraw the cases against the homophobic actions of the Russian Federation that his organization has pending with the European Court of Human Rights.



Russian militia is detaining a gay activist

 For years, Alekseev and his supporters have been trying to organize a Gay Pride event in Moscow. Every time, the homophobic local government bans the parade and brutally attacks the people who gather to attend it. Moscow's mayor Yury Luzhkov is a notorious homophobe. He has repeatedly denounced all attempts to hold a Gay Pride Parade in Moscow. The mayor, who is the most powerful and feared person in Moscow, is well-known for his vile homophobic statements.

At this point, nobody seems to know for sure what happened to Alekseev, where he was taken, and who is sending text messages from his cell phone claiming that Alekseev is ready to withdraw his court claims against Russian authorities and leave the country for good.

In 1993, sexual acts between consenting males were decriminalized in Russia. Since then, the Russian gay community has gained visibility and has worked hard to promote a message of tolerance. Still, Russia's official attitude to sexual minorities has remained viciously homophobic.

The Hateful and Bigoted Proposition 8 Is Finally Defeated!

The day when the horrible Proposition 8 was passed in California barring same-sex couples from marrying was a day of mourning for all progressively minded people not only in this country but everywhere in the world. Now, finally the US District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker struck down this ridiculous Proposition 8. This is what he said to explain his decision:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite- sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

I'm especially happy that Judge Walker addressed the irrationality of Prop 8. California that, from what I hear, used to be a hotbed of activism, dissent and progressive thinking, at a certain point went in a completely different direction. The state became an international laughing stock when it elected the dense Arnold Schwarzenegger as its governor. Since then, California's economy has been destroyed, its world-famous education system is in ruins and its government is boggled down in the kind of bureaucracy that only a Republican governor is ever able to create. The result of this kind of a mess is, as we all know, popular resentment and a consequent search for a group that can be marginalized, persecuted and made to suffer. In the midst of their economic misery and bureaucratic martyrdom, Californians leashed out against same-sex couples.

At least now we know that there is one jurist in California who is still willing to uphold reason and act in a rational way: Judge Walker. I congratulate Californians on this great judicial decision that moved California back to the list of civilized places.

You Go Argentina!

I love Argentina even though I haven't had a chance to visit yet. I love its culture and its impressive intellectual production. I also love the very peculiar Argentinean way of speaking Spanish. My own Spanish is the Argentinean version because it's the most expressive of all. Today, I have even more reasons to be happy for this great country:

Argentina has become the first Latin American country to let gay couples marry and adopt children, defying Catholic opposition to join the ranks of a few mostly European nations with similar laws. . . Argentine President Cristina Fernandez supports gay marriage on human rights grounds and is expected to sign the law after her return from a state visit to China. The proposal cleared Argentina's lower house in May. Fernandez told state news agency Telam the law was a "positive step that defends minority rights."

A nominally Roman Catholic country, Argentina is now at the vanguard of gay rights in the region. Church leaders had campaigned against the measure, rallying tens of thousands of opponents, from children to elderly nuns, in a demonstration outside Congress on Tuesday. But opinion polls show most Argentines support gay marriage.

This is great news for Argentina and for Latin America at large. It seems like the United States will soon remain the only developed nation that is openly homophobic. Shame on us.

Kudos to Mexico City

Fantastic news from Mexico City: yesterday marriage equality won in this city. Lesbian and gay couples can now get married there.

Hopefully, we will soon see gay marriage legalized everywhere in the US as well.

Same-Sex Marriage

I've been having such a good day and then I heard these incredibly sad news from Maine. A public referendum repealed the state law allowing same-sex marriages. It is so incredibly frustrating to see how many miserable, mean, and retrograde individuals there still are in the world.

I've tried long and hard to understand why anybody would want to prevent other people from enjoying the same rights that one has. How can any reasonable individual be opposed to a couple in love getting married? How can they live with themselves? How do they explain and justify the atrocity of living in the world where their fellow citizens are routinely discriminated against and persecuted? How do they deal with the shame of this situation?

Thankfully, I don't have any anti-gay bigots around me. This is understandable, since I can't imagine being friendly with this kind of hater. Since my world is so different, it always shocks me profoundly to discover how many people are still building their lives around hatred.