I'm also feeling the need to do a spot of Dickie-defending on the reported interactions with Michael - not just because I generally like Richard (which I do) but also because I think many of those interactions have specific meanings - or at least a different slant - within gay male culture and/or the gay 'scene'. One of the most interesting aspects of Big Brother, for me, is the opportunity it affords to observe the way groups form along or (more usually) across axes of sexuality. While we're used to token gay people among a greater heterosexual whole, or fictional 'gay dramas' like Queer As Folk, it's relatively unusual to see numbers of real gay people interacting over time with each other and with non-homosexual groupings.
Anyway,
Michael asked not to be called "she", and it was, in my view, somewhere between thoughtless and offensive for him to keep doing it.
As I've said upthread, I'm slightly limited in my sympathy for Michael here. Yes, on paper, he really does have a right not to be called "she" if he doesn't want to be called "she". To me, however, the fact that Michael's making a point of objecting to this is suggestive of a degree of insecurity around the intersection of gayness and masculinity, and I think Richard's picked up on this too. Where they're clashing is in their respective ways of handling this insecurity. Richard, having resolved the issue (can one be gay and a man?) to his own satisfaction genuinely wants, I believe, to help Michael resolve it too. Michael handles the issue by denying it exists, minimising his sexuality ("there's more to me", etc.), fearing/reviling 'camp' and, arguably, projecting a certain degree of negative material onto Richard.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, I'm with Richard here in that I think Michael does have issues around his sexuality, and is managing those issues in ways which are, ultimately, going to make him unhappy. If Michael cannot accept that 'camp' - in himself and in others - is not a scary, masculinity-eroding force to be feared, he'll always have problems with (at least some) self-loathing. I think Richard, being comfortable in the role of mentor (which also fulfils his dependency needs), would've liked to have had a hand-on-shoulder chat about Michael's insecurities - and I don't think it's necessarily patronising of him to think he can help Michael with these - but, this not having happened, he's pushing Michael's boundaries on the feminine pronouns thing, which is symptomatic.
I also felt Mikey had a point countering Richard's assertion that he (Richard) and Michael should be able to talk, as gay men "on the same team" ~ I'm not sure if a shared sexual preference (or age, or ethnicity, or nationality) has ever guaranteed that people develop a bond in Big Brother.
No, nothing is a guarantee - but, among gay men, comparisons of common experiences (realising one's sexuality, 'co,ing out', etc.) often do lead to a degree of shared intimacy - more so than simply being the same age, nationality, etc., because the chances are that both parties have shared certain life experiences. Not always, but often. Richard be more aware of this than Mikey and, frankly, I think he's right to flag up the complete absence of this shared intimacy as unusual. I think the reason it hasn't happened is less to do with Richard's inflated expectations of gay-gay commonality than with Michael's slight fucked-upness about identifying as gay.
Richard's efforts to talk "reasonably" to Michael in the bedroom later were also pretty ludicrously weak ~ he picked up on one comment about Michael having asked others for advice, and then walled up, unwilling to hear any more, telling him to put dynamite up his arse and then calling him a queen (in his absence, admittedly). For all his claims that he's constantly offered to sit down calmly and chat, if this was evidence of his attitude then I do sympathise with Michael.
Didn't see this, obviously, so I can't comprehensively comment. I do think, though, that if I were in a Houseful of heterosexuals plus one much younger gay man who seemed a bit troubled around his sexuality, I suspect I'd feel a little hurt if he rebuffed my attempts to impart (what I, in my Great Therapist/Healer role, knew to be) my pearls of Gay Wisdom and instead went to the hets for advice. In this case, it's exacerbated by the fact that Richard (like me, to some extent) fulfils his own dependency needs by (ostensibly) addressing the psychological needs of others. He'd take the non-interest - either sexually or as mentor figure - of the one other gay-identifying male as rejection indeed. Probably why a spiteful element's creeping into his boundary-pushing.
And finally, I found it a little odd that Richard seems to present his spats with Michael as, I don't know, Bette Davis vs Joan Crawford bitching in Tinkerbell's boudoir. "Watch the glitter fly". Pete and Mikey seem far more glam and actually more feminine than Richard and Michael.
Not odd at all. It's standard on the gay 'scene' for this sort of colourful description to be bandied around, regardless of how "glam" or "feminine" people are perceived to be. Think of it, like the pronouns, as a sort of campified argot, maybe a modern evolution/bastardisation of polari. |
