The Duty of Privilege

Today, for the first time, I began to gain a conception of my own privilege as a white, heteroflexible male. I was at a dinner with some friends and the topic was, predominantly, a housemate of ours who was handling a situation with her boyfriend effectively getting free room and board at our house; we were letting off steam. I raised the topic of how she disapproved of a recent hookup of mine with a trans girl (a peaceful, enjoyable incident).

A friend sat next to me, a gay man, then proceeded to quiz me on the status of the girl. What was between the legs? I implied. And then came the comments, for the first time, that I had heard so much about but never experienced firsthand.

“so really he’s a man then”

“oh don’t tell me not to mislabel”

You get the picture; the topic was dropped quite quickly. But for the first time I understood my place in the world as someone with privilege. I will never have my identity negated in this manner. And, truly, that was what this was, he was negating the lived in experience of this person, of this girl. 

Ignoring issues of respect, courtesy, and politeness, which had previously been the paradigm through which I viewed these issues, I began to understand that this went a lot deeper than simply being respectful of someone’s life. The issue at hand was identity, society’s rejection of said identity, and for the briefest of moments I saw, clearly, in front of me, the various ways in which the negation of these people’s will is coded into every day conversations and how it is so easy to sweep something to monumental under the carpet with a single comment.

I was angry and troubled in about that order. And I began to see my role as an ally to the LGBT community; I began to see my duty to use my privilege to educate and shut down those who are being disrespectful and offensive to the persecuted. My eyes felt open; and the saddest thing of all is the fact that it’s taken me a deep interest and self-alignment with the LGBT community and many many years of knowing LGBT people, and then having to witness transphobia, to get to this point. Even sadder is the fact that people have to live with this every day, many times a day.

And the fact that the person making the comments was himself gay opened my eyes to another issue which I had previously been agonisingly neutral on; the fact that gay men are often rampantly transphobic. It was a truth I had not wanted to face up to; simply, I have known gay men throughout my entire life, my best friend, who I have grown up with and regard as a brother, is gay. I holidayed with a gay male couple as a young child. I have lived their struggles; witnessed the ignorance. And to see one negating a struggle, and being ignorant in turn, was a shock, but a necessary one. I realised I could not be blind to this; I needed to stop flirting with the #notall(gay)men line of thinking I was running with. The fact that the majority of the gay men I know are conscious and conscientious of issues outside of themselves does not matter against the wider issue; to ignore the wider issue is simply selfish.

I instantly realised how hard it must be for trans people. That sounds like a huge understatement, and it is. And I also saw that I must make a conscious effort to raise awareness of these issues where I can, educate on the correct way to address trans people, live a life using my privilege as a tool to raise others up with me, do my bit to help society become accepting of all people, and to stop standing by blind, letting others take it on.

It is hard to face these truths; it is hard to shut people down if they are being offensive, especially when they are friends; it is also hard to analyse one’s own behaviour, and realise that one has been transphobic, as I now recognise I had been in the past; it is also hard, as someone who assumed themselves as an LGBT ally, to realise that being an ally goes much further than simply being friends with LGBT people.

But as hard as this is, it does not at all compare to the hardships faced by those who are persecuted daily for simply being. And this is the greatest realisation of all; the fact that I will never know this is not the norm, it is pure luck on my part. But luck is random; this respect should be afforded all. And I know now that I must try my utmost at all turns to allow this to be afforded to all citizens, LGBT and other. 

R.I.P David Bowie

They say that nobody can be all things to all men, but David Bowie, more than probably any other artist, had that immeasurable knack of pleasing everyone. If you like folk, there's an album for that. If you like experimental, there's an album for that. Pop. Rock. Avant-garde. And so on.

But more than just his music, like any true artist who becomes slowly enveloped into the public consciousness, their image and status become more than just an impressive list of works and deeds. Bowie meant something to people, in the way that someone like Lennon meant and still means something to people to this day; Bowie will no doubt still mean something to people many many years down the line.

What I've always found most fascinating about the Bowie persona is how he has always remained true to his art and intentions, seemingly because of, not just despite, his enormous popularity. I've generally viewed him as far from accessible. "Labyrinth", probably his best known film, is straight weird. "The Man Who Fell To Earth" is a work of pure auteur cinema. "Heroes", the album which is home to probably his most well-known song, isn't some straight piece of pop but a truly weird, dark album with themes of war and being plagued with debilitating uncertainty. In a time when homophobia was fairly rampant, and in the midst of some fairly conclusive rumours, Bowie was unafraid to dance like that, in that street, with Mick Jagger. This is a man who, arguably, produced his best work while collaborating with Brian Eno, who is best known for an ambient album. Bowie seemed to work in the mainstream whilst also digressing from it.

This was displayed very well on his most recent album "Blackstar", which all of a sudden makes a great deal more sense. The fact that half of the album was already out there a couple of months before the release date struck me as odd; being able to listen to the songs Blackstar, T'is A Pity She Was A Whore, and Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) made it harder to get excited about the album as a whole, since it wasn't really going to be a surprise; but if Bowie had known for as long as he has that he was unwell, then all of a sudden there is that sense that Bowie wanted his final statement to be out there as soon as possible. Music videos like "Lazarus" become a little less oblique, the symbolism of the excited burst of writing becoming clear; the lyrics to "I Can't Give Everything Away" (a song I was previously not too keen on), when taken as the final testament of a very sick person, become devastating.

This shows Bowie at his best, then; a man turning deeply personal works of creation and self-examination into art for the whole world.

He was legendary. Nobody I knew actively disliked David Bowie. His reach enormous, his achievements vast, his career towering. He has gone out with a bang by producing some of his most interesting music in decades, and the true tragedy is that it felt like he still had a great deal left to say; indeed, it felt like he would always have something left to say that would be worth listening to.

If that isn't the mark of a great artist and a great man, then I don't know what is.