Woman in the Making: Panti's Memoir (21 page)

And
a funny thing happened. I hit a gay nerve. The blog post went viral, was passed around and became the subject of debate in the gay community. It sparked online discussions, articles in newspapers and conversations in pubs. Not everyone agreed with me, of course, but many did, and suddenly it turned out that the younger gay community
was
interested in marriage equality. They were passionate about it. It wasn’t my blog post that made them passionate about it, they always had been, but before this they didn’t know how to contribute.

What did they know about politicians and conferences and meeting rooms? They didn’t even own a suit. But here was that big drag queen talking a language they understood, about a campaigning organisation that spoke their language too, the language of Facebook posts and noisy demonstrations, and that was something they could contribute to. The debate sparked by the blog encouraged them to get up and get involved. It prodded them to agitate against the status quo, and suddenly the New Gay I’d been so hard on started to look more like the Old Gay I recognised. And at the next demonstration there were many more people, many more young people with placards, chants and whistles. And at the one after that there were even more, until eventually there were thousands and thousands of people marching to the Dáil.

I’m not saying my angry blog post was responsible for that, but it did play a role in lighting a fire under a section of the LGBT community that was waiting for a
spark. And it was the first time I realised I had a voice. An effective voice. The gay community knew me. They knew me well. For years I’d been spinning on their stages, organising their parties, hosting their events, writing in their magazines and making speeches at their Prides. They knew who I was and where I’d come from. It’s hard to ignore a drag queen anyway, but twenty years of sequins and sweat had given me a profile that amplified what I had to say. Drag, I learned, didn’t muffle my voice. It amplified it – and that was a lesson that would stand me in good stead some years later when I was asked to address the audience in the Abbey Theatre.

It was also a lesson that was reinforced only a few months later. That June, Dublin Pride was invigorated by the campaigns for civil partnership (which would come to fruition the next year) and same-sex marriage, and by the tensions that had arisen in the community over them. As I usually did, I emceed the post-parade event in the park behind Dublin City Council’s offices, an event that is part political rally, part party, with a mixture of speeches and entertainment. It was a beautiful sunny day, and during my own address to the colourful crowd, I tried to ease some of the tensions in the community by reminding everyone that we were all on the same side – we all wanted marriage equality, whether we thought civil partnership was a good stepping stone or not. However, I reiterated that we did indeed want full marriage equality, and pointed out to the crowd that,
‘Any asshole can get married. Any Fascist, any murderer, any sex offender can get married, but you cannot.’

The following Sunday a well-known columnist called Brenda Power took me to task in the
Sunday Times
, arguing against same-sex marriage. She trotted out the usual well-worn arguments, though the article reached a particularly silly nadir when she argued that
Panti is wrong on another point – homosexuals are entirely free to marry. They just can’t marry someone of the same sex
. The tone of the article was condescending, and it lit a fire of anger in the community. The gay community is well used to people taking swipes at it, but it was the scornful, disrespectful tone of Power’s piece that riled people. She dismissed me (as so many had before and would again) as a ‘bloke in a dress’, and the following week ‘advised’ the gay community that no one would take them seriously if they allowed their argument for equality to be articulated by a ‘grown man’ in ‘fancy dress and a fright wig’. She disdainfully dismissed me as a man in a dress but would she have similarly dismissed a woman who spoke while wearing a suit? I imagine Brenda Power had no idea of the shit-storm she was about to bring down on herself, but the paper was soon flooded with angry emails – much to her shock – and the paper’s editor was forced to defend the decision to print her piece. It became the subject of much heated debate online, in publications and on the airwaves, where it was the grist of phone-in talk shows and weekend
discussions. Power and I were interviewed on various shows to defend our sides of the argument.

Occasionally commentators like Power find themselves the focus of real anger from the LGBT community and they are often confused as to why, but the ‘why’ is usually because of the tone of their remarks. If the gay community was to get angry with every commentator who argued against equality for gay people we’d have no time to do anything else. However, we are a community that is already sore and bruised from a lifetime of cuts delivered by schoolyard bullies, Christian preachers, conservative politicians, workplace managers, family, neighbours and Saturday-night drunks, so when a person in a position of power, like a newspaper columnist, uses their platform to sneer at us, we feel it deeply. We sit with our morning coffee over the paper, or at our work computer, and we are right back in the corner of the schoolyard with some hefty older boy holding our wrist and slapping us across the face with our own hand, laughingly demanding to know, ‘Why are you hitting yourself?’

But Power had made another mistake. She wasn’t to know it, but by singling Panti out she stoked greater anger, because the gay community was angry on my behalf. When she slagged off Panti she slagged off someone the gay community knew well. I’ve been ruining their nights out for years! To the younger ones I’m the slightly annoying drunk aunt who turns up at Christmas, and
to the older ones I’m the queen who’s been trotting out the same five numbers for the last twenty years. They may not all like me (!) but they all
know
me. I’m gay family. So, when Power singled me out for disdain she was slagging off family. The gays might think I’m an annoying, mouthy fool but I’m
their
annoying, mouthy fool. I’m their sister and they are allowed think it if they want, but Brenda Power is not.

So, a lot of the community took umbrage on my behalf. They circled their gay wagons around their mouthy cow, and fired off a volley of irate emails.

It was all a storm in a gay teacup, of course, but it was good to know that the gay community had my back, should I need it. And it reminded me once again that I had a voice – amplified by drag.

I
AM FORTY-FIVE YEARS
old and I have never held hands unselfconsciously with a lover in public. That small everyday pleasure, so utterly taken for granted by most people, has never once been mine.

As with most gay people, there was a time in my young life when I struggled against being gay. I didn’t want to be different. I didn’t want to be this thing I didn’t really understand, this thing I’d learned was shameful and joke-worthy. It took some time, but once I’d understood and accepted who and what I was, I have
never
wished it had turned out differently. I am entirely, deeply, thoroughly, relievedly happy to be gay. It suits me. Were I of a religious bent I would say I feel blessed to be gay.

Yet every day I’m jealous of straight people. I see them making those small, casual gestures of affection and intimacy carelessly in public and I’m jealous. I see a young
couple strolling through the park, casually hand-in-hand, and I’m jealous. I see a teenage couple at a bus stop, she leaning into him, her hand in his, both tucked into his jacket pocket, and I’m jealous. I see a man unconsciously put a protective arm around his girlfriend’s shoulders and she links her fingers in his without thinking and I’m jealous. I see an older woman stop and gesture to draw her husband’s attention to something in a shop window; he takes her hand without thinking and they stand peering into the window discussing whatever drew her attention, hands unselfconsciously and casually joined, and I’m jealous.

Gay people don’t get to hold hands in public without first considering the risk. We don’t get to link arms or put a hand on a boyfriend’s waist without first weighing up the possible consequences. We look around to see where we are, who’s around. Is it late at night? What kind of area is it? Are there bored teenagers looking for amusement, lads outside pubs? Will we get sniggers? Taunts? Abuse? Worse? And if it seems safe enough we hold hands but those hands aren’t casual and intimate, they are considered and weighed.

We walk along hand in hand trying hard to be carefree and normal, but we aren’t. We’re scanning the pavement ahead just in case, and when you see a group of blokes coming you determine to keep holding hands, defiantly, but now your small, intimate moment between two people in love has been turned into a political act of
defiance, and it’s ruined. And then you think what a lovely afternoon you’ve had and how all it will take is one spat ‘Faggots!’ or a cut lip to turn into a bad day so your hand slips out of his. Suddenly the distance between you seems gaping and filled with a kind of shame. And even if you’re somewhere where you feel entirely safe, somewhere no one will react badly to your tiny gesture of affection – say, wandering through a posh department store – people will still notice. They may only notice, smile and think,
Isn’t that nice to see two gays holding hands?
but they still
notice
and I don’t want them to notice. I don’t want our private moment turned into a
statement
. Like Schrödinger’s cat, our small intimacy is altered simply be being observed.

Holding hands in public with a lover may seem like a small thing, but there are lots of small things – every day – that LGBT people have to put up with that others don’t. Things we are expected to put up with, and count our blessings that we don’t live in a country where we could be imprisoned or executed for being gay. Countless small adjustments we make, which others don’t have to make, in order to be safe or not to be the object of scorn or ridicule. And we are so used to making those adjustments, so used to these small things, that we rarely even notice them ourselves any more. They are just part of the background of our lives, a constant malign presence that we have assimilated. We take these things for granted, as a given, simply part of
being
. If
we complain, we are told we have nothing to complain about because aren’t we lucky we don’t live in Uganda or Russia?

But that’s not good enough. It’s not a game where the person who has it the worst wins the right to complain and everyone else has to shut up and put up. Our society is homophobic. It is infused with homophobia. Dripping with it and pervaded by it. And when you are forty-five years old and have spent thirty years putting up with it, thirty years absorbing those countless small slights and intimidations, sneers and occasionally much worse, you get tired of it. You get fed up putting up. You get fed up reading another article by another straight person telling you that you are somehow less than other people. You get fed up being described as ‘intrinsically disordered’ by people who don’t know you from their celibate pulpits. You get fed up of scrawled graffiti and fed up of people sneeringly describing things as ‘gay’. You get fed up of steeling yourself to walk past Saturday-night drunks hoping they won’t notice you. And you get fed up with interfering busybodies using their time and energies to campaign against you being treated the same as every other citizen. People who organise meetings, make speeches, write letters to newspapers, appear on television and argue on radio all in an effort to have you separated out from everyone else and treated differently. Treated less. People whose bizarre obsession with the sexual life of other people won’t let them simply let me
live my life as I see fit. People who attempt at every turn to interfere in my life.

Of course I would prefer nobody to harbour any animosity towards or feel discomfort with gay people, but I can live with someone’s personal and private casual homophobia. I don’t mind if Mary in Wicklow sees Graham Norton on the telly and thinks,
He seems nice enough but does he have to be so gay?
I don’t mind if Mary – who doesn’t know any gay people apart from that fella who works in Curl Up & Dye and her only knowledge of gay people and their relationships is what she’s picked up from schoolyards,
Coronation Street
and church – sees a report about same-sex marriage and thinks,
Oh, I’m not sure. I don’t think that’s a real marriage
. I can live with that. I’d hope that Mary would get to meet some gay people and find out that we are just the same, just as nice and just as annoying, as everyone else. I’d be happy to sit on the sofa and watch
Coronation Street
with her. And I’d be happy to have a cup of tea with her and talk to her about why she feels uncomfortable with the idea of gay relationships. And I’d hope she’d change her mind. For her own sake as much as anyone else’s, because gay people are as capable of bringing goodness into her life as anyone else. And we could help her with the decorating.

But Mary’s personal, private discomfort with ‘the whole gay thing’ is entirely different from the kind of homophobia that manifests itself in public.
A homophobia that manifests itself in an attempt to have LGBT people treated separately, differently, less. A homophobia that seeks to have LGBT people characterised as less worthy of respect. A homophobia that is enshrined in legislation and ensures that gay people are treated differently from their straight brothers and sisters. That kind of homophobia I
do
have a problem with, and LGBT people should be allowed to call it when they see it. It’s our right to do so.

Religion, of course, has to shoulder much of the blame for our society’s homophobia – most religions teach institutionalised homophobia and hold it up to be an admirable thing. Religion is certainly to blame for almost all of the people who actively campaign against equality for gay people because it gives their homophobia succour. It tells them they are good people as they whip up animus against gay people who are just trying to live their lives. It slaps them on the back as they rally for discrimination. They, of course, vehemently deny it. ‘We don’t hate you!’ they cry. ‘We love you! We love the sinner but hate the sin!’ as if it’s possible to separate the two. You can’t separate the ‘sinner’ from the ‘sin’ when the so-called sin is an intrinsic and essential part of who you are. But no matter, because they will bend over backwards and tie themselves in ever more ridiculous moral and theological knots in an effort to excuse and justify their homophobia.