Please help get clarity on the future of the RVT

Please help get clarity on the future of the RVT

There's not many more wonderful or important gay venues in London than the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.

In many ways it's hard to tell the history of gay and lesbian London without it. For sixty odd years the no bullshit fabulousness of its club nights – with its drag acts and theatrical performances – have been a kind of safe haven from the outside world for LGBT people across London, one of the handful of places in which the words 'gay community' makes sense. First, from its role in the sexual revolution of the post-war period, then its position on the frontline of the AIDS crisis in 1980s (Paul O'Grady, a regular Tavern performer back then, talks about this movingly here). It's recent cameo in the movie Pride is just the latest recognition of its status.

Today it's endured as a bulwark against the wanky nonsence of a lot of Soho; a place where you can see many of the same faces mixed in with the new each time you go, and probably the first place I felt at home when I moved to London a few years back.

All of which made me sad to hear and read that it might be at risk. What we do know is it's either been sold, or is about to be sold, to investors. Who exactly is unclear, but most likely from abroad.

One of its previous owners will continue to manage the place for now, and they've done an amazing job over the last decade to keep it thriving. But by all accounts the Tavern's long-term future is still unclear. There are still persistent rumours that it will eventually be torn down, transformed into apartments, a hotel, or otherwise sanitised out of all recognition.

Anyone who's been to RVT will know its location makes it prime real estate. Indeed sadly none of this can be stripped from the wider context of the creeping gentrification and commercialisation of a lot of South London, including parts of the gay scene. To see the RVT go the same way would be a real act of cultural vandalism. Sadly, as yet there's been a stony silence from the Tavern's new owners on their intentions.

So, a small campaign has started up to get assurances about its future, and to secure the Tavern as a community asset under the recent Localism Act. If successful with Lambeth Council, this last measure would give the community the right to bid for the Tavern in the event that its put up for the sale again. It's not impossible that some local group would come forward to bid for the place.

In the meantime, the questions that need to be asked and which many people are anxiously waiting the answers to are:

• Who has bought the RVT?
• What are the new owners' plans for the place both in the short term and in the long term?
• Will they share those plans, or consult on them?
• Can the new owners provide proper assurances that it will stay open as a gay venue, and true to its long history, for the long-term?

On all of these, there have been no answers. So if you are reading this and are as fond of the RVT as many of us are, please take time to either share this blog or ask the questions of RVT yourself via Twitter @TheRVT or email INFO@RVT.ORG.UK. And please push the issue to local politicians, media etc.

Again, this is not about denigrating the management of the Tavern, who have kept it alive and kicking over the years. It's just about getting clarity and assurances over its long-term future, and that any plans for it stay true to its character. If this were any other bar, we could all just find somewhere else to get pissed on a weekend. But the strength of the RVT is that it engenders greater feeling than that, and it means more than that – past and present. Those who go there aren't just its customers, but a community too, so we should act like it until its future is secured.

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EDIT: Thanks to everyone who has helped push this issue. The RVT have now put out a statement in response. It's here: https://www.facebook.com/TheRVT 

Good news that they're engaging on it, but sadly the statement is mysteriously silent on most of the questions people are asking. The most simple one being who owns the RVT and what their long-term intentions are. It's important we all keep asking that, which many of us will - this has only deepened the mystery for me, anyway!

Smarter HIV prevention in the UK

Piece for World AIDS Day 2012. Originally appeared here 
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Smarter HIV prevention in the UK

World AIDS Day. For many it will conjure image of young men in the 1980s dying helpless, horrible deaths in hospital wards. Many old enough to have been there will still be able to recall the raw panic that enveloped the early years of the epidemic.

In truth, though, while such imagery unquestionably helps us remember, and to raise money, they are not terribly useful for understanding the reality of HIV in 2012 – or for informing HIV prevention policy. Which is not to say HIV is longer an issue – last year saw the highest number of new HIV diagnoses among gay men in the UK on record. But rather that the epidemic here has moved on. And we desperately need to take heed of this if you’re going to bring down rates of HIV infection.

For one thing, thanks to treatment, if diagnosed early someone with HIV can expect to enjoy a near-normal life expectancy. Second, and most importantly, that treatment can reduce infectiousness by up to 96 per cent – making it extremely unlikely they will pass it on to others.

Quite obviously, though, this is only the case if the individual is diagnosed early. And it’s this which is the great challenge of HIV today. Late diagnosis explains the vast majority of people who die or develop AIDS. What’s more, crucially, it’s the undiagnosed who are now driving our epidemic. Fifty per cent of people with HIV in the UK are diagnosed late (CD4 count of under 350), 20 per cent very late (under 200). Twenty-five per cent of the 100,000 people with HIV don’t know they have it.

Earlier diagnosis through more regular testing thus becomes not only beneficial for personal health, but vital for public health and stopping the spread of the epidemic.

Clearly, conventional HIV prevention such as condom promotion and sex education remain crucial. But they must be coupled with a range of interventions aimed at increasing testing. Just throwing more money at community groups alone will not solve the problem. In short, we need a smarter approach to HIV prevention.

So what are the building blocks of this? Well-funded HIV services and a universal public healthcare system are pivotal. Sadly, both are being undermined by this government.

Beyond that, there are a range of steps the government need to take if they are serious about doing more to reduce rates of HIV. These include:

• Political commitment. The UK has no HIV strategy. The last one, introduced by Labour, expired in 2010, and has not been replaced by this government. This leaves us as one of the few countries in the world without a national HIV strategy.

• More proactive testing by health services. At the moment, testing is conducted on an ‘opt-in’ basis – it requires voluntary commitment by the patient. We need to move towards an ‘opt-out’ system – where your consent to be tested is implied unless you explicitly withdraw it. In high-prevalence areas, all GP surgeries should routinely test all new patients for HIV, while hospitals should do the same for every patient who walks through their doors. The last government commissioned a report which found that this was was feasible, cost-effective and highly successful in reducing rates of undiagnosed HIV. This government has made no real effort to back or implement this.

• In general, testing needs to move outside of just the GUM clinic into GP surgeries, hospitals, communities, saunas and clubs.

• Better HIV partner notification. Telling your recent hook-up when you’ve been diagnosed with HIV is a surefire way of getting them to go for a test. It’s really effective as a means of diagnosing people earlier. But it’s difficult. Services within GUM to support it are patchy at best, and need to be improved.

• An ‘annual testing’ message for Africans living in Britain. It exists for gay men – why shouldn’t it for Africans too? After all, they make up nearly half of the UK’s new HIV diagnoses.

Such steps are not as sexy as high-profile national prevention campaigns. But they would be as effective, if not more so, in stopping the spread of HIV in this country today. So let’s use this World AIDS Day to give money and remember those lost, but also to renew and update our public conversation about HIV and the steps we take to stop what is still, after all this time, a profoundly preventable condition.

The ever so slightly weird cult of Tom Daley

It's a slightly unfortunate time to write a blog on Tom Daley being the target of dubious attention, given the genuinely horrible nature of some of the stuff aimed at him yesterday. But though it pales in comparison, nevertheless, I felt the need to get something off my chest about the 'bigger than Jesus' like popularity of Daley in the gay world.

The poor boy only had to show his face at the opening ceremony on Friday and my Twitter feed exploded with gays seemingly experiencing a sort of collective orgasm; my phone all lit up with friends letting me know quite what they’d like to do to him. Maybe this is just representative of the people I’m friends with or follow, but I can’t remember many days passing where I haven’t seen people trading speedo pics of him. Even outside of the Twittersphere; I was out in Soho on Saturday night and I could barely shuffle five yards without unwittingly eavesdropping on a conversation about him.

Far be it from me to piss on everyone’s chips, but does anyone else find all this a bit, well, weird? Is it just me that feels a bit queasy over it? It’s not just ogling per se, its how merrily explicit a lot of it is; I wouldn’t consider myself particularly prudish, but even I’ve been pretty shocked by how graphic and unabashed a lot of ‘Daleymania’ is!

Don’t get me wrong, he’s pretty ‘n all, and he seems like a lovely guy. But, for one thing, he is painfully young. I mean, he’s barely pubescent. This is a boy who, picking a song that “reminded him of being twelve years old”, chose Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ (Yes! The one released in 2007!). This is obviously less pressing an issue when it comes to the twinky types who lust after him, although even on this I think there's something to be said (more on that later). But, judging from Twitter and my own personal experience, a lot of the people engaging in this seemingly endless Dutch auction of inappropriateness are old enough to know better, to put it mildly. One of the guys I was out with on Saturday - a 40-year old man (in a relationship!) - had a picture of him as his phone wallpaper/screensaver! That's odd.

Part of this is undoubtedly because a lot of gays have convinced themselves that he is “one of us” and therefore somehow tantalising attainable – there are allegedly ‘doubts’ (mostly cast by gay men) over his sexuality, although point out that he reportedly has a girlfriend and the sincere haste with which this is insisted to be a cover story is a bit creepy (“I’ve analysed every word of what he says about her, and I can tell you it means nothing” a friend sniped at me recently). But even if he is a homo (doubtful), does that make people in their 30’s or 40’s publicly leering over him ok? If so, would you think the same of a middle-aged man ogling an 18 year-old girl? And don't cop-out and wibble on at me about 'power differentials' - there is clearly a power differential between an older man and a barely-adult male.

Even outside of the age issue, if polite society, at least, places limits on the leering of straight men, why do none of these seem to extend to us gays? If (or when) a straight man you knew started tweeting or banging on in a bar about how they'd like to fuck this or that female swimmer - what would your instant reaction be? If you move in more civilised circles, i'm guessing someone would probably sound a note of discomfort, at the very minimum. If you object to any boundaries on such issues - gay or straight - then fair enough, but if you don't it seems mildly hypocritical to enforce them for straight but not gay men.

It's also noteworthy that the vast majority of Daleymania is focused on his physique ("those abs" et al!), and is a symptom of a wider trend. To much an extent, the worship of him represents and reinforces a worship of a very particular ideal of beauty: tall, lean, young, short-back-and-sides, muscularised, sculpted abs, no trace of hair or fat anywhere in sight etc. I cannot remember a time when this ideal was more ubiquitous in the gay world than now: in promos for bars, on gay dating websites (I know one guy who won't go near another guy if he doesn't have big arms!), in the gay press, the lot.

In this respect, Daley is positively identikit. To be honest, to my eyes he resembles something more belonging to Madam Tausades than endless pages in Attitude. It's just so dull. But that is my view, obviously, and tastes vary. People don't consciously choose what they find physically attractive. Nonetheless, this view of beauty has not always been as dominant among gays as it is today, as research documents - it is not necessarily given or natural. Much of it is driven by porn, for instance.

I'm also not sure that its overwhelming dominance is particularly healthy, or rather that it goes without consequence. A recent study by the YMCA, Succeed Foundation and academics at UWE Bristol found that gay men are much more predisposed to suffer from anxiety about their body image than straight men. The APPG on Body Image's report this year found similar, citing gay men's greater propensity to chase "unrealistic beauty ideals". Unsurprisingly, eating disorders remain consistently higher among gay men. Interestingly, backing up the earlier point about boundaries, the YMCA study also found gay guys far more likely to engage in "body talk" - speech that reinforces the particular standard of attractiveness I mentioned above - than straight men (91% to 77.4%). You don't have to be a genius to draw the dots together.

I'm not arguing that gays suddenly developing a suspiciously avid public interest in synchronised diving will on its own drive a mass of homosexuals to the toilet bowel with two fingers down their throat. Neither am I leading the charge for a re-introduction of Victorian sexual values (I've no wish to see pictures of Tom Daley's ankles, for one). All i'm saying, I suppose, is would it hurt if we were a bit less predictable once in a while?

In defence of Ooh-missus!: why Andrew Pierce's article marks a worrying trend in the gay community

I've never met Andrew Pierce, but I can't imagine he's much fun in bed. His rather joyless little column in The Daily Mail yesterday, 'Why I, as a gay man, abhor these TV queens' follows in the footsteps of 'Why I, as a gay man, agree with the Pope' in February. Whether this is just lazy sub-editing on the Mail's part or old Andy is developing a camp sitcom-style catchphrase of his own is unclear. Nevertheless, it seems he is fast developing into the Mail's 'House gay' of choice.

There's nothing inherently wrong with criticising the attitudes or values of gay men, but take a look at the bile that drips from Pierce's fingertips in his latest offering. He rails bitterly against “the prancing, preening fashion icon Gok Wan”, the “lisping, limp wristed” Alan Carr, Graham Norton - “with his mincing, ooh-missus act” - and Julian Clary, “who has made an entire career out of making Larry Grayson look butch by comparison”. These “simpering, soppy, superficial cissies” give “ordinary [gay] men” a bad name, he says.

That the Mail has to resort to channelling its resentment towards the gay community through the proxy of a gay man is a strange victory of sorts for the gay rights movement, I suppose. Ironically, it is the history of that movement which Pierce owes his throat-clearing, 'as a gay man...' identity politics-stylee prefix to – a history he betrays by using his article to define himself against other gays. By so thoughtlessly bashing 'camp personalities' he inherently looks to set up a discursive divide between 'ordinary' gay men and 'camp queens'.

This seems to reek of a desperate plea for acceptance to his conservative audience; “Accept me, I'm not like them!”. He swears to them that most of his gay friends just want to watch Football and “worry far more about the state of the economy than over whether Kylie has found true love” (and what a hoot they sound!). Sadly, though, this kind of self-loathing should be placed in the context of a worrying trend within the gay community, where the more gay guys become integrated into mainstream society, the more they become embarrassed by their peers in the gay world. Go to any gay dating website and you'll see men describing themselves as, and looking for, “straight acting guys”; “no queens please”, “Sorry, I don't like camp guys”, and so on.

Many gay guys, at some point, feel alienated by mainstream gay culture and can become resentful. This is usually – like it was for me - just a stage on the path to self-acceptance, owing more to how we feel about ourselves and fretting over what our family or friends will think of us. The trouble is more and more gays are becoming stuck in that stage, legitimising it with the kind of intellectual froth Pierce echoes: gay identity doesn't 'define them', it's 'just who they fuck'; through this view, gay clubs, gay pride seem rather old hat. The corollary is often – as it is for Pierce – that all this is needless now gays have “genuine equality”.

But this is deeply misguided and dangerous for a number of reasons, not least because there are many remaining battles to be won by the gay community at home and abroad. Related to this, though, it ignores the history of camp. It was not 'ordinary gay men' who lead the Stonewall riots, kicking back against police harassment and sparking the gay rights movement in the Western world, but drag queens. That movement was not led successfully by people who defined themselves against others being oppressed or denigrated in a scramble for the lifeboats, but who wore their homosexuality proudly, loudly and with a sense of togetherness and brotherhood against outright hostility.

Most fundamentally, the gay movement which 'camp' spearheaded has achieved what it has because it was radical. It was not fuelled by a desire for Pierce's conservative ideas of equality (non-discrimination, marriage etc.), it has just come to land there in modern times. It was originally linked to a much wider political and social critique; it wanted to change institutions not just be accepted by them, to challenge conservative ideas of 'normal' gender roles not be subsumed within them. Through this prism calling camp an 'act', even if true (a tricky argument anyway based on its complex interaction with orthodox femininity), misses the point and betrays the original cause. Such ignorance could also partially explain so much of the gay worlds disgraceful treatment of transgender members of the community.

I don't mean to imply here, as Peter Tatchell has, that any gay who is not a radical is a sell-out. It is rather that people who bash 'camp' at least partially owe it the comfortable place within mainstream society (and columns in the Daily Mail!) from which they emit their prickish sneers, and should understand and respect its place within gay history.

Just because people like Pierce feel they don't need gay identity, or gay clubs, or gay pride, doesn't mean others cast out by their families or society don't. What binds gay men is not just 'who they fuck' but a shared history of exclusion, denigration and (until recently at least) out right oppression.

Articles and attitudes like Pierce's splinter solidarity and carry within them historically illiterate, depoliticised concepts of sexuality and identity. As worryingly, they are complacent, potentially offering a new cloak for those who wish to attack the gay community or unpick its successes. I've lost count of the number of times straight guys have said to me words to the effect of “You're fine, it's the mincers I don't like”. It will not do for people like Pierce to legitimise this modern form of homophobia. It's high time they thought twice before being so selfish and lazy, and recognised whose rather more fabulous shoulders they stand on.

Twitter: @SteveAkehurst

Also see: The hilarious David Hoyle's little rant!