Welcome to the Post-Gay Era
on the memeification of Pride
Order a copy of the zine vol. ii while they’re still available and attend our launch party on 7/11.
It’s the summer of 2011, and the gays are just around the corner from their long-awaited liberation. Pop stars are churning out formulaic bubblegum dance-pop songs about embracing who you really are. Those who have been rejected, outcast, or bullied…made to feel less-than, abominable, intrinsically disordered…who have been perpetually victimized by archaic, closed-minded social and moral standards are about to have their day.
Those bold souls (D-list singers and actors, corporate executives, careerist politicians whose campaigns were flailing) who promised you just a few months back that despite your current state of misery, it will all–thanks to their faith in the power of marketing campaigns and aggressive lobbying…or in Hegel–miraculously “get better.”
“The bullies seem like the powerful people and the successful people,” conceded one Apple exec whose denim suit jacket and late 2000s boycut was giving Ellen Degeneres (pre-cancellation)-realness. But she lets us in on “the secret of the real world”: those bullies are “at the peak of their power at 15 and 16.” Clearly not having read On The Genealogy of Morals, she encourages you to swallow the resentment pill and hold out on hoping for their downfall. “There will come a time when the bullies are not successful and the people they bullied are. And you just have to out-survive ’em.”
Another exec at Pixar reminds you that the prejudices born of antiquated norms are fading away, and in time people will “evolve” to accept that which was once taboo as normal. And that until that fated day, you should tell on those bullies to a trusted adult who will solve your problems for you with just the snap of a finger (after the filing of complaint forms and mandating that your dreaded persecutor attend a reeducation workshop).
And sure enough, it all turned out to be true!
You can finally hold hands with your life-long lover (or Grindr match, or sugar daddy, or the random guy you hooked up with in the bar bathroom last night, or “partner”) while walking down the street and receive not only acceptance, but the admiration of your newfound allies, who “are so happy for you two (or three).” You can finally book vacations at luxury resorts in (backward) developing island nations that not only will not chase you out for being who you are, but will offer you a whirlwind experience that caters to your demographic–and all at a discounted price! And for those of you in New York state, you can finally wed your beloved in a courthouse (or Episcopal church) and–most importantly–get tax breaks and other government benefits and protections, and enjoy each other’s company for the rest of your lives (or for ten years…or ten months).
In three years, gay marriage will be ratified across the whole country. And soon, mega-corporations will display their allyship in their ad campaigns, on their social media feeds, and on their floats at pride parades. Straight men will “have no problem” with you, and in fact they will boast about the amount of gay guys they’re friends with—just as white people do about their (2) black friends. Straight women will want to collect you as they do bargain-priced accessories at Claire’s, fawning sycophantically over you and constantly reminding you how “fab” you are [for affording them all the benefits of male attention without the fear of rejection, and for making them feel like they’re on the “right side of history” without even having to lift a finger] and encouraging you to “slay,” “go off,” and “sashay away.” Hallmark will make gay movies. And artists including Lil Nas X, Bad Bunny, and Sam Smith will perform sexually lude dances with other men (including Satan) on national television!
But alas, our era of all things LGBTQ–of corporate queers and rainbow capitalism, of hr-friendly rhetoric and therapeuticism, of gay identity politics and corporate-backed lobbying, of the domestication of what was once considered transgressive and, well, queer–has crumbling. Whether you want to blame it on the wrath of God, the failure of liberalism, the decline of late phase capitalism, the change in Mercury’s orbital patterns, or the infamous “vibe shift,” the Trevor Project’s promises have proven false, empty, and for lack of a better term, “gay” in the worst sense of the word.
And yet ironically, everything has gotten better–precisely because the promise of a bourgeois, disenchanted, neoliberal rendering of homosexuality has not lasted. We are returning to something akin to the (much more fascinating) Pre Stonewall imaginary of gayness. The era of gay victimhood is over. The spirit of creativity and vivacity has replaced one of conformism and cloying moralism. And pride has been rendered a mere meme of an era past.
The iron cage of “diversity” and Human Rights Campaign-approved discourse is collapsing, opening the door to a (truly diverse) variety of gays: queer theorycellectuals and BPD art heauxs, liturgy queens and trad Caths, homosfascists and Dimes Square scenesters, and those who—much like the girls—just wanna have fun…getting coked up at raves and finding a new Grindr match everyday.
It’s become “based” to read Quentin Crisp and Yukio Mishima, whereas reading only Foucault and Butler will get you written off as “cringe” (tho we—like Whitney—will always love them). The dissident voices of Milo Yiannopoulos and Mike White have found an audience, and those from the past like Camille Paglia and Stephen Patrick Morrissey have enjoyed a resurgence in popularity.
Granted, if given the choice, most would (reasonably) prefer to be gay during the neolib LGBT era than in preceding ones. Ostracization, violence, and abuse suck. The queers owe much to efforts made by the gay lobby which have made it easier—at least within most Western countries—to be treated like human beings, without the fear of getting hate-crimed…a fear which still remains very much real in other parts of the world (and outside coastal elite bubbles in the US).
I concede that perhaps—as
points out about Women’s Lib—the excesses of the Gay Lib movement was all a necessary phase in the trajectory toward progress…not that that will stop us from critiquing it. The over-reliance on a narrative of neutrality and normalization over mere respect and toleration, and on heavy-handed bureaucratic measures, has created a new regime determined to deny reality…which most gays have come around to see through.The gays have once again come to recognize that homoerotic desire intrinsically pushes the boundaries of Nature. It drags you into a cosmic drama, bringing you face to face with eternal taboos which originate in the ontological design of reality, (and not merely in intolerant, oppressive social structures), and that its abnormality is a reality that, rather than to be denied, is to be embraced and celebrated.
We may argue over whether this transgressive impulse is best channeled into pagan decadence, artistic creation, intellectual or literary exploration, or sublimated into an ascetical vocation ordered toward the Divine. But whichever path one chooses, it has become passé to deny that there is indeed something distinctive about homosexuality. The delusion that “love is love,” that gay desire constitutes something neutral, on par with heterosexuality, has faded into the annals of public discourse.
The gays’ repulsion toward conformism–an inevitable byproduct of the transgressive nature of their sexual inclinations, and an indispensable gift to the rest of “respectable” society–is in part responsible for the crumbling of the hegemony briefly held by the neoliberal narrative of gayness. The great gays of history remind us why today’s gays could only stomach the dogmas of Orwellian political correctness, the idolatry of “normalcy”—all of which are anathema to the gays who feel compelled to break the rules—for so long.
Their metaphysical condition places gays in a privileged position to shatter the empty paradigms of bourgeois respectability, inclined as they are to ask not about what should be considered nice and proper vs. rude and poor manners, but instead to get to the bottom of things and inquire into the distinction between truth vs. lies, good vs. evil, God vs. the devil. The gays have taken up what Paglia has called their prophetic, “shamanistic” duty once again, provoking us to contemplate the ultimate poles between which human existence is suspended.
…Besides, nobody likes the whiny gay who only knows how to regurgitate narratives about gay victimhood as if reading off a script. But everyone loves the fun, witty, bitchy, sassy, iconoclastic gay…the gay who really challenges you to think, whether about the nature of beauty and suffering, or whether you truthfully look fat in that dress.
This shift can be measured by the change in dynamic between gay men and straight women. We have moved beyond the era of the “f@g hag,” the insecure straight woman who–due to fraught relationships with straight men or her daddy issues–clings to her Gay Best Friend. For her, the GBF is a mere tool, a plaything upon which she projects her need for male attention, a source of affirmation and entertainment. The hag-GBF dynamic remains stuck in the womb, characterized by their mutual infantilization and enmeshment.
The hag gives her GBF an excuse to evade maturing, from entering into the phallic phase of development, giving him license to absolve himself of his own responsibility. To the hag, her GBF was “born this way”–case closed. A perpetual victim, his suffering is always the fault of someone else–heteronormativity, toxic masculinity, Cardinal O’Connor…take your pick–and his only hope is to depend on the protective power of the gynocratic bureaucracies who–with their seemingly limitless powers–can promise to make “it get better.”
But now, we have returned to the era of the iconic, powerful, strong, goddess-like straight woman and her adoring gay fan. These women–who embody an eternal ideal, one whose power transcends that of any earthly powers–are the subject of the gay man’s worship, unlike the hag who he reluctantly puts up with. She drags him out of the womb and tenses his being toward the prospect of greatness, thereby making him a man. She’s not one to coddle–she’s a mother who will whip him into shape, inspiring him to risk his life for ideals as lowly as hedonism or as high as beauty, to the point that he’s willing to die for them. The icon has no need for her devotees, she does not depend on them as the hag does on her GBF, which is precisely what makes her so enticing.
This dynamic is no better represented by the changing of the guard of the gays’ favorite pop stars from Born This Way-era Lady Gaga to Rennaissance-era Beyonce. The former, who aptly named herself the “Mother Monster,” symbolically fed off of her “little monsters,” whom she was determined to keep stuck in her womb. The lyrics sound like they were generated by a version of ChatGPT created by the HRC, checking the box of all of the pre-fabricated identity categories of the era, thus feeding the audience (the consumers) an easily digestible piece of art (product) that relieves them from having to think deeply or–again–to contemplate the complexity of homoerotic desire.
The production–with its repetitive, pulsating, generic electro-pop beats (so generic that Katy Perry and Ke$ha’s pride/“be who you are” songs are nearly indistinguishable from the original they copied off of)–incite not passionate dancing but mindless spasms of the body. It is the soundtrack of an era run by technocrats hellbent on flattening the cosmic imaginary of its subjects, rendering them soulless, cyborgian, “buffered” selves. Robbed of their agency and capacity for critical thought, the rhythmless Little Monsters are the ideal type of consumer who will believe whatever their superiors spoonfeed them, rendering Lady Gaga like Maria of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis who was sent by hidden elites to sow chaos amongst the masses (which might explain why she dressed like Maria in the “Born This Way” music video).
The listeners of Beyonce’s 2022 sensation Renaissance are what happens when Little Monsters finally get a Freudian psychoanalyst and reach maturity. If Born This Way mass produced whining victims, Renaissance birthed resilient bad bitches. The album, with its revelrous, cryptic, and C.U.N.T.-y lyrics, accompanied by complex polyrhythms–inspired not by the latest form of technology but by the spiritually-rich sounds of R&B, house, disco, and afrobeats–draw out the primordial energies from its listeners’ souls (and in order to dance to Renaissance, the “kids” must actually possess some actual skill).
The members of the Beyhive have no use for your pity or allyship. They are originals, creative and intelligent enough to not need to rely on an algorithm to make sense of their queerness. They are not interested in gayness being accepted in the realm of normalcy, as they find the quasi-liturgical, dionysian settings of the underground drag club or the ballroom to be much more fitting, and titillating. Beyonce’s masterpiece, which exudes the radiance of the African diaspora, is a distant cry from the cold, rationalistic mindset of the Anglo-American sensibility, being as it is miles more amenable to mystery and paradox, and thus to the cosmic tensions implicated by homoerotic desire. [NB: Gaga gets hella props for ARTPOP, which—unlike Born This Way, and aside from Renaissance—was one of the greatest feats of queer art in recent years.]
And so, the paradigm has been flipped. The vibe has shifted. Or as Beyonce might put it, we “done found us a new foundation.” It all seems to be getting better after all…but not for all of us.
While the gays have managed to slip away from the delusions of neoliberalism, the rest of us have yet to peer past the facade and consider the magnitude and gravity of its hold over us. The conception of the autonomous, self-defining individual, who is free to choose from a set of “neutral” lifestyle choices of equal worth, marketed as “identities,” masks the darker side of our consumerist paradise.
The great gay Marxist artists Pier Paolo Pasolini and Giovanni Testori warned us in the 1960s–during the dawn of Italy’s consumerist era–of the threats posed by the death of the sacred and the expansion of “abstract” power, respectively, brought on by the sway held by major corporations, the entertainment and fashion industries, and secularized political institutions.
We may be sold a narrative of liberation, of constant pleasure and novelty, of individuality and diversity, but none of these promises are delivered. Where nothing is sacred, nothing has true value. Everything is “equal,” yet it’s all rendered meaningless. When power is without a human face–and has no reverence for things eternal, it has no limits, and its subjects lose all freedom. We may be free to “express ourselves,” yet our choices and identities have already been determined for us.
Alas, the gays have outsmarted the regime, they have seen through the emperor’s invisible clothes. For them, nature is triumphing over the machinations of technocrats puffed up with their own power. A new, broader imagination is prevailing over one that would have us naïvely believe that we can all be placed into artificially delineated, neatly packaged identity “categories”…as if people can be siphoned off into L G B or T. Who, for that matter, is even “gay” anymore? The notion of “sexual orientation” has been rendered irrelevant by the newfound impetus to explore human sexuality in all of its mysteriously fluid beauty and folly.
We’d all do well to take notes from the prophetic witness of the gays.
And so, attend a Pride parade this month if you wish…though you’re not likely to find many queers there (you’re more likely to come across soulless straight girls in search of a distraction from their vapid lives) as they’ll be too busy living it up at a rave, or at Latin Mass, or shitposting ironic memes about this blessed month from anon accounts.
Welcome to our post-gay era.
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