Having sunk into the gloomy mires of applying for MAs, I have completed my first and by far most stressful audition, and have emerged rather bewildered and miserable and my thighs hurt for some reason. And I now have caught up with the 365 doodle, and when I work out how to do overlays the page will be much better made!
I travelled to beautiful London (it was a very pleasant spring day so that is not sarcasm. From me it normally would be) and stayed with my mother’s old school friend who lives in Merton. Then I travelled to the Barbican and arrived in plenty of time for audition, which was over within the hour. Then I headed back to Paddington to trudge back home, via train, long wait at train station, another train, mile walk to my car because I’m a cheapskate and then the drive home. It was a rather intense twenty-four hours, of which less than one was spent in the focal point of hand-wringing and hair-pulling and weeping, while around ten was spent in travel. Perhaps that’s why the details of the audition so soon became somewhat hazy to me, even before I’d reached Paddington. Much like lost time when one is abducted by aliens: between one and two of Monday afternoon, I was in an audition OR I was on an alien spaceship.
In the midst of all this excitement I managed to watch Christian Jessen’s documentary Undercover Doctor: Cure Me, I’m Gay. I was rather expecting an easy judgemental hour, not unlike the Jeremy Kyle Show. It was much more horrifying than I’d expected. I suppose I’d always thought the phrase “gay cure” was amusing and slightly cute, so I hadn’t really thought about the hate and the guilt and the shame that goes into medicalising sexuality and deciding it can and should be corrected. One of the “therapists” asserts that homosexuality is caused by trauma, which can include sexual abuse by an older man and he mentions in passing that “this was the case for [him]”. I felt incredibly sorry for him — what a horrifying placid pleasant can-do attitude stretched over a gruesome mangle of anger and shame. Again, I was not expecting this, but I suppose most of these people are fear and guilt with shiny white smiles on top, leading very tragic and angry existences. Not unlike the people for whom a woman posting selfies is cause for teeth-splitting rage.
I do rather like that quote, which I hope by now is famous: “Homophobia is the fear of being treated by other men the way that you treat women”. It makes me think of the people who say they’re not homophobic but they deserve not to have homosexuality foisted upon them by being hit on by gay people. I get wolf-whistled at and honked at by passing cars (with the latter I assumed it was a kind soul alerting me to a problem with my attire; then I would discover that my skirt was never tucked into my underpants and someone has just made an obtrusively unpleasantly loud noise while driving past me very fast and gah), and I do not much care for either. I should like to be able to claim homosexuality and reply that in which case I deserve not to have heterosexuality foisted upon me by loud noises in passing vehicles. But I would wager that for some very logical reason I do not have that right.
I had never thought seriously about the thought process that leads one to tout so-called gay cures, because it is nutty nutty nutty. I had not, for example, thought about how it is inherently sexist. A common cure is to basically peel away your offensive fag trappings and don the garb and mannerisms of a good wholesome heterosexual citizen. “Healthy man love” I heard in another documentary, which sounds powerfully erotic. Essentially, you are ordered to put on baggy t-shirts, trainers and baseballs caps while talking about tits and chugging beer. If you’re a man. I think if you’re a woman they make you bake cookies and simper at men (to be fair I am good at both those things. I’m also quite good at chugging beer and talking about tits). This was disturbing, but not quite as disturbing as the nice church-going American teens spouting some of the most hateful nonsense you’ve ever heard as politely and pleasantly as they know how (seriously), or the aversion therapy which was prescribed on the NHS in the 1970s, wherein you are given a drug that makes you violently ill and you are left to vomit onto the floor in front of you while listening to a recording about what a terrible disgusting person you are.
Having heard what the “gay therapists” have to say, I can now say that they are much, much nuttier than I had anticipated.
Nel Norris 