Kelly GAY - Poria - NEW ZEALAND

KELLY GAY, PARTG CENTRAL CAMP

Opns about, and disagreements over, genr qutns ran through many aspects of gay male culture, and men revised and modified olr ias about masculy and effemacy durg the 1970s. [2] The Hawk Bay Gay Society Newsletter mentned their mment to ‘the faggot culture and magic liv wh each of ’, notg they ‘serly believe that is time for Gay men to nscly seek their faggot visns and strengths’. For nearly a century men who dragged up wove together their own artistry and a real or imaged homoerotic culture, but durg the 1970s the meang of drag changed somewhat.

‘An example of radil drag is a man who wears female cloth but who also wears a beard’, Ldsay Taylor wrote the Christchurch Gay Liberatn Front Newsletter. Some lobbyists wanted to clu gay men and lbians society’s fns of masculy and femy. They railed agast ‘stereotyp imposed on by sexist society’ and rejected the prumptn that ‘we uldn’t be real men or women bee we’re gay’.

Any one of uld be the girl the office or the boy next door’, and a Duned stunt group mented that gay men ‘look exactly like male human begs and clu All Blacks, policians, clergymen, and ps’.

FELIX KELLY, A GAY EXPATRIATE

In a feature about a male supporter of gay rights, the Sunday Tim wrote: ‘He was young, clean-cut. One of the Gay Lib News’s rrponnts objected to the staffg of Gay Liberatn Front stalls by ‘drag queens out of drag’, and sisted that a ‘straight-actg’ image was preferable to an ‘extravagant’ one. [11] The arguments had a very real impact on those gay men who did not want to – or felt they uld not – f wh the domant imag of New Zealand masculy.

I am a self-evint homosexual, that, is effemate, and any attempt by me to endorse the view that most gays look, act, and drs a siar way to heterosexuals would be a plete waste of time. The effemate gay mt not be ma out to be a ‘eak’ amongst the Gay Communy orr that society may more readily ‘accept’; the ncept that Homosexualy is normal, bee that’s opprsn, the very thg we’re fightg agast.

The activist Sandy Gntlett argued that drag queens were the ‘most maligned of gay people’, spe their brave ristance to society’s ‘genr programmg’, and another wrer suggted ‘drags’ were pneers the gay movement, havg had ‘the urage to “e out” and bear the bnt of straight srn long before any of dared to’.

GEMMAH’S TRANSGENR STORY: FROM CARMEN AND SEX WORK TO THE BIG GAY OUT

A mp athetic retaed s importance wh gay culture. Gay men perdilly picked up the old nnectns between homoeroticism and the archly mischievo, and they suggted the quali epomised what meant to be gay. One newsletter suggted that mp – ‘viewg the world an ironic, unser way, ncerned wh grace, fun, playfulns, and artifice’ – was an important part of gay life.

[15] The newsletter affirmed the existence of ‘a fe mp athetic, a gay sensibily that all homosexuals n share and be proud of’. They thought ‘group inty’, ‘gay culture’, and a distctive ‘gay liftyle’ had to be created somehow, and nclud that mp was the way to do . ‘Keri’, Rosser (ed), Gay Catholics Downunr, p.