We are bombarded with an ever-worsening picture of gay men’s mental health. Every time I tune into the gay press these days there are lofty claims about how mad we all are, and getting madder by the second. I know and others who regularly read my blog would also know that I stopped counting when the LGBTI Health Alliance called us the most suicidal Australians of all (a big rap, to be sure, and motivation enough for me to hastily drop my local citizenship to be restored as fully Irish). The shimmer in those shocking statistics was that ‘worst’ can actually be enumerated as 14 times more likely than non-pewfs to do the deadly deed. Fourteen times, I say, why not 100 or 1000? Thankfully, Zietsch et al. (2012, p.p.521) pull back in this article to a measly twice as often but dang, who really cares about a 700 per cent gap between researchers, anyway?

That said, if I was hoping for the authors (2012) here to embark on a sensible revision of the bulging mountain of crap that has sprung up, linking pewfness to madness, I was soon sorely disappointed. In fact, by the time I got to the end of this article I was positively seething that the authors (2012) felt compelled to issue a plea to homophobes that their findings not be used as anti-pewf fodder:

‘It should be emphasized that the findings of this study should not be interpreted so as to pathologize non-heterosexuality, any more than we should pathologize non-right-handedness, which is also associated with higher rates of psychiatric disorder (Elias et al. 2001; DeLisi et al. 2002). Research aiming to understand the link between sexual orientation and psychiatric disorder should not be stymied by groups that seek to misuse the findings to support an anti-gay agenda’ (p.529)

A similar argument might be put for the right to free speech versus the intended or likely outcome of such speech to promote violence against gay men or any other marginalised group. One can wish for research to be objective, critical inquiry and one can start out earnestly wanting to discover why it is that pewfs are ever so shockingly mad in comparison to non-pewfs. However, anyone claiming that ‘non-heterosexuality’ (2012, p.522) and depression share common etiological backgrounds is bound to ramp up passions on both sides of this hotly contested debate. Even more so, I would suggest, since Zietsch et al. (2012) trash the widely-held notion that sexual orientation is fixed at birth (p.529). They quip that it is the freaky interplay between genes and environment (2012, p.529) and not any ‘biological theory of male sexual orientation’ (2012, p.529) that creates male subjects who grow up bent, and blue (p.528).

Caused perhaps by an absent father and overbearing mother?

Well, not precisely, but Zietsch et al. (2012, p.523) do promote those well known criminals, that is, poor parenting and (pp. 523, 526, 528-529) childhood sexual abuse (pp.523-524, 526, 528-529), as possible explanations for later, co-existing homosexuality and depression. When claiming ‘that 60% of the correlation between sexual orientation and depression can be accounted for by genetic factors’ and that pewfs are born predisposed to neuroticism and psychoticism, the authors (2012, p.528) are veering so worryingly close to coming out with their own flaky gene theory that they might as well be selling pink slime on top of that grotty DNA. According to that theory (by whatever name), pewfness and madness are co-located in the same messed-up genes and so finding those faulty genes opens the door to knocking out two duds for the effort of one. Unfortunately, it also buys right into the homophobic garbage that homosexuality is a sickness that can be cured.

Admittedly, at first glance I was fascinated to read in this article (2012) that pewfs in that progressive liberal democracy, Norway, are still so resolutely down in the dumps, despite all the lavish servings of humanity bestowed upon them in recent years (pp.521-522). Does hard evidence of that type confirm, therefore, that even accounting for contextual variations, pewfs are more prone to madness than are non-pewfs and further, that pewfness and madness are spat from the same stinking pot?  On that point, Zietsch et al. (2012) appear to simultaneously back the certainty of that causal association while conceding ‘uncertainty’ as to how one gets from stinking pot to gloomy queen (pp.528-529). Even discounting the critical causation problems associated with the frustrating fuzziness of any depression ‘diagnosis’, there are numerous alternative explanations for why pewfs are seemingly exponentially madder than non-pewfs, including that:

1. Gay men are more likely than straight men to be aware of and responsive to their emotions;
2. Gay men are more likely than straight men to seek professional help for their emotional problems;
3. Even in enlightened domains such as Norway, health professionals are likely to hold stigmatised behaviours and attitudes toward gay men, among them that such men are inherently flaky;
4. And flowing from above: just as health professionals are less likely to recognise depressive symptoms in straight men, they are more likely to recognise depressive symptoms in gay men; and
5. The immense power imbalance that is usually contained within the doctor-patient relationship enforces the will of the former over the latter or more simply put, the patient tends to confirm what the doctor wants to hear:

D: How are you feeling?

P: I feel like total shite.

D: So you’re depressed, then?

P: Yes, I guess so…

The quest to improve our understanding of why gay men are seemingly overrepresented in mental health statistics must be undertaken with due regard to the constant presence of homophobia in our lives. Those who would gladly see us burn in hell because of who we are or what we do, predominantly, that many of us engage fervently in anal sex, would be full of joy to learn that researchers are getting closer and closer to proving what they already knew, that is, that homosexuality is a discrete, psychopathological subset.  Dissin’ the dominant ‘‘minority stress’ hypothesis’ (p.521) is hardly a radical step by the authors (2012) when one considers that many within the gay rights movement have already done the same, primarily because the they hate us hypothesis does not properly explain why so many gay men are depressed, suicidal, self-harming or drug-fucked. However, replacing that hypothesis with a biogenetic one will not itself yield more robust findings and could pave the way to pewf extinction…

Update: Having been told about this article, seasoned gay haters, Salt Shakers, commented that the findings ‘certainly confirm what we have said for some time’…

Male suicide is a highly emotive topic. Few of us like to talk openly about any sort of death, let alone when someone has topped or attempted to top himself. Ever more disinclined we are likely to become to start blathering on, should the subject person have been an immediate family member, close friend or trusted colleague. The poor sod must have been depressed or was somehow masking his depression through drinking like a fish or frittering away his life savings on the pokies or working himself into the ground. These are the quick, preferable coveralls to any deeper, alternative explanations of the truth. That we refrain from stepping into that troubled space where men frequently think about suicide and infrequently act upon those thoughts no doubt underpins why male suicide remains such a decidedly stubborn problem to fix.

On breakfast television this morning, commentators from opposing sides were debating the hypothesis, whether we should decriminalise the personal use of drugs that are currently illegal. The prohibition argument rested on pathologising the pathetic addict as a helpless deer caught in a trap, waiting for some evil drug dealer to set upon her or him to rapidly suck the life from their veins. That two-bit fairy tale reminds me that the suicidal male, too, is invariably stripped of all individual agency, self-efficacy and knowing intent to become instead the passive recipient of some dark, external force. ‘Was depressed’ is what we mostly say nowadays when whispering about some guy found the night before hanging off a tree in our local park. We then nervously shuffle off such untimely deaths to medical orthodoxy, for them to consider in glorious isolation.

Medical orthodoxy can never adequately explain why any particular man chooses to kill himself. For one, they are deprived of what was going on inside that man’s head at the precise moment he decided to take his own life. Moreover, almost invariably they are denied an accurate description of the context in which that man was living around the time of his death, often relying on the perhaps unreliable reports of others to fill in the gaps. Those reports are then filtered through a doggedly biomedical lens to confirm that yes, for sure, that poor sod was woefully depressed. Missing from that constricted explanatory framework is the first-person narrative in which the male subject describes his own suicide attempt and further, what Coleman et al. (2011) refer to here as the requisite ‘social lens’ (p.240).

That is, as they put it, ‘[u]nderstanding male suicide requires a social lens’ (2011, p.240).

I think you need to grasp the personal and the context elements and therein, the myriad of relationships between that subject and his settings, to get a proper understanding of what drives any man to push his own life over the edge. It is a great shame that male suicide survivors continue to be shut out of most research into suicide prevention or, perversely, when they are admitted it is usually on the strict pre-condition that they accept medical orthodoxy as fact. You were mad, you were depressed, you were irrational, out of your mind, and of course, you never really wanted to die. We continue to thrash around in a sea of clichéd value judgments about male suicide, falling back as the authors (2011) do here on noting various risk factors for early demise: whiteness (p.243), gayness (pp.243-244) and drunkenness (p.242), among others.

What I did like about this article is that Coleman (2011, pp.246) move quickly past the usual dross to come up with a plausible explanation for male suicide, based on Baumeister’s (1990) ‘escape theory of suicide and Hufford’s (2001) subsequent elaboration of it in analysing alcohol use and suicide’:

 ‘The theory is at the individual level, but the dynamics described by escape theory reflect consequences of the dominant male gender role. Though Baumeister (1990) did not emphasize gender in his theory, he argued that depression was not a satisfying explanation for the majority of suicidal behaviour, and his theory sought to explain both depressed and non-depressed suicidal acts. Stated simply, escape theory proposes that suicidal acts are more likely when an individual is emotionally distressed by a self-perception of failure and this leads to a narrowing cognitive state of limited emotion, attention, and lowered inhibition. The suicidal act is an effort to escape an intolerable view of self and the related negative affect’ (p.246)

Another plausible explanation for the exponentially higher rate of completed suicides in men, when compared to women (Coleman et al. 2011, p.244), can be expressed like so:

1. From birth, males are subjected to multiple instances of attachment trauma, first by their primary carers wanting to raise them as boys should be raised and thereby establishing distance and a refusal to comfort. That odious practice is reinforced in the public domain, where boys soon learn that to seek emotional support from their peers is to run the risk of getting their heads kicked in (Pollack, 2006, in Coleman et al. 2011, p.246).
2. At the same time, these boys are continually reminded of their patriarchal dividend, that is, what power and control they currently possess or at least can expect to realise, purely because they were born male. Grandiose expectations collide with an inflated sense of entitlement that certain things should always be just so like, for example, that once married your wife will obey and serve you, always.
3. Stemming from that bizarre sense of entitlement, all men retain the option of using violence to prosecute their cause (Hunt 2006, in Coleman et al. 2011, p.249).  Ergo, the men’s rights movement was founded and has persisted to date on a steady supply of mindless aggression. These men are seriously affronted that their former partners and others would dare to challenge their god-given right to resort freely to the biffo.
4. Which can all lead to that most interesting of outcomes, that is, that when push comes to shove, and men are confronted by one or more life stressors, many crumple into a pile of dog shite or otherwise, thrash around wildy, inflicting violence on others and if need be, on themselves. While the authors (2011) suggest that male suicide might be the product of men’s meanderings into the extremes ‘of the traditional male gender role’ (p.249), I would interject that something more rudimentary might be at work…

Something, perhaps, long ago, when a distressed little boy turned to his ma or da or other primary caregiver for a hug and they brushed him off, thinking ’tis better to crush his immediate need for closeness than to transform him later, into an immaculate pewf…

Narcissism is a funny ‘personality trait’ (2012, n.pag.) and an even funnier mental illness, since the prime condition of being irreversibly and unquestionably stuck up one’s own arse is as much admired as it is loathed. We live in an era where we daren’t call or criticise anyone, where every degree of human suffering can be equivocated and every failing, dismissed. The pumped-up person and even more so, the pumped-up man is something to which we can all aspire and yet, as Reinhard et al. (2012) lament here, this man is actually suffering like a mongrel dog. As I write this I think back over narcissistic men I have known or still know and wonder how I came to portray such total arseholes as objects of my pity instead of my derision?

‘Despite grandiose self-perceptions, many researchers find that narcissists simultaneously possess fragile self-views grounded in a sense of inferiority and worthlessness. For example, Horvath and Morf [2009] demonstrate that a threat to the ego activates concepts of worthlessness in those scoring high in narcissism, but has no effect on low scorers. To cope with these feelings of inferiority, narcissists use defensive strategies following threats to self’ (2012)

No disrespect to Horvath and Morf (2009), but a paucity of ego resilience is a consequence common to many different blunt blows to the psyche. Adults abused as children, for example, often grow up easily rattled by the slightest jarring to ‘who’ they are. That does not mean that such people are also woefully narcissistic. Most are not. The fundamental problematic of the narcissist is that she or he is totally incapable of empathising with anyone. Worse than that, she or he derives perverse pleasure from causing torment to others, particularly those to whom that narcissist is ‘close’. Why we then anguish over such calculating fuckwits and reconfigure their dastardly deeds as the unwitting outpourings of a troubled soul, would go some way to explain the surge in the prevalence of this disturbing ‘disease’.

Culturally, conditions are presently ripe for the proliferation of narcissists…

I would dispute the contention put forward by the authors (2012), that narcissism is characterised by defensiveness and that in turn leads to an increase in physiological arousal which in turn, again, can be matched by a bleed of chemicals into the bodies of the on edge subject. Well, at least when the subject is male (2012). Granted, tests like those conducted in this study (2012) might reasonably conclude that a positive association exists between being male, a higher degree of cortisol and unhealthy (or destructive) narcissism. However, I would hazard a guess that it is not defensiveness driving the cortisol flooding in narcissistic men but alternatively, aggression. It sadly remains a culturally acceptable practice for men within most industrialised nations to take down anyone who threatens their jive:

‘Males tend to score higher on narcissism, and males also have larger increases in cortisol concentrations after stressors…Given societal definitions of masculinity that overlap with narcissism (ie. they include arrogance and dominance), we hypothesize that these difficulties in maintaining an inflated sense of the self are at least in part related to the extent to which males endorse stereotypically male gender roles. Threats to male gender roles and masculinity are constant, and provide a source of stress that make these roles difficult to maintain. Narcissism is also stressful and difficult to maintain. In addition, both high masculinity and narcissism advocate for high independence and agency, and empathize individualism over an acceptance of social support’ (2012)

Earlier this week I read that ordinary grieving linked to death or other significant forms of loss is heading for inclusion in the DSM-V. It is likely that narcissism will be up for the chop from that bloated psychiatrists’ bible. For the latter point, I say loudly, hurry up already! Narcissism should never have been classified as a mental illness, to then serve as a grotesque get of jail free card for men who cannot keep their grubby paws, or whatever, to themselves. The deification of certain bodily chemicals as being the shut down to any dissenting critique can only be sustained if one adheres to the rubbish that such chemicals have a single causative effect like, for example, that cortisol causes defensiveness. I know, defensiveness also causes cortisol but so too does aggression, among many other considerations.

The next time I see a man behaving narcissistic-ally, I shan’t be fretting over the poor thing’s cortisol levels. Why men ramp up so readily, with hubris and gusto, is not a chemically induced reaction based on the pretext of defensiveness but simply a culturally acceptable practice that men can and often do, behave badly…

As the Australian Government rolls out its 10 year ‘roadmap‘ for mental health reform, research by Jorm and Reavley (2012) tells the sorry tale that over the past 15 years or so, the mental health of men (and women) across this wide brown land has stagnated. Considering the mega billions poured by Government directly and indirectly into mental health generally and into specific programs targeted at men (think National Suicide Prevention Strategy), it would reasonably be expected that the dour-o-meter should be going backwards. To that end, at least the suicide rate for men has declined considerably from its peak in 1998 (2012, n.pag).

Jorm and Reavley (2012) postulate socioeconomic factors and ‘environmental change’, including ‘major flooding’ as possible reasons for the statistical blockage. Another potential explanation that they offer up is that as people become more aware of mental health issues they are more likely to report (2012). Controversially, the authors (2012) wonder if poor quality mental health services, the overprescription of anti-depressants and the misuse of the Medicare, Better Access (psychological counselling scheme) have not added to the malaise. Where they end up is where I always start, that is, that there needs to be much more emphasis by Government on taking ‘preventive action’ to account for the ‘social determinants of mental health’ (2012).

Tragically, the Government’s roadmap for the upcoming decade continues to largely ignore those social determinants.

Yes, dear readers, we all know, ’tis the Australian way to go round and round and round in circles, like a dingo with distemper…

See also: I only stumbled upon this rant from Alan Rosen on Croakey the day after sprouting out the above. I swear, so pointed, so insightful, and so funny, a solid boot up the date for the circular nothingness that constitutes not only mental health reform in Australia right now but essentially, also how the Government generally does business. No wonder so many Australians, who can afford it, spend so much time travelling abroad!

Where I live in Sydney City is fast becoming the young pewf capital of the world, which is something of a mixed blessing for an ageing queen like me but also, sets the stage for a fascinating social experiment. Hyper-masculine muscled guys who can usually only be confirmed as gay by partners attached, parade tank-topped in even the coldest weather around the local Coles Supermarket. Sometimes they leave their pampered pets, poodles or pit bulls, lassoed out the front and sometimes they momentarily give away, through high pitched laughter or spirit fingers or a pre-drenching of Euro cologne, symbols of pewf personality traits long since consigned to history. Just to mix things up further, at any time of the day or night, cute young straight Asian couples wearing designer pyjamas can saunter in to stock up on Western goodies…

I suppose I want to believe what Hyde (2005) claimed is true, that is, that there are only minor psychological differences between category ‘male’ and category ‘female’ (2012, n. pag.). Why is that? Well, for one, I have spent the past 150 years studying men and masculinity and from those observations I have come to realise that claims which split men and women far and wide purely on the basis of sex are wholly factitious. Oh sure, it makes for great pulp fiction and dud training courses and totally lame government policy but in reality, it has no legs. What we think is demonstrable proof of men behaving like men should is always a $2 postcard for a tome far more complex – which is why this article by del Giudice et al. (2012) made me smile.

The authors are so god-damn awfully brash about being able to squeeze an elephant into a thimble. For example, they conclude that divorce-ability can be reduced to ‘neuroticism, low conscientiousness, and (to a smaller extent) low agreeableness’ (2012, n.pag.). Indeed, it is this squeezing of particular personality traits into either of the two categories available that both proves those allegedly robust sex-based differences but also exposes substantial methodological flaws in said attribution. Women do seem to be warmer and more caring, men more dominant and risk taking, women more interested in the aesthetic and men, the logic (2012). The clustering of specific personality traits according to sex does thus lend itself to that phenomenon being called natural.

Yes, women could be from Venus and men, from Mars…

However, as any good sociologist knows, while a raft of sex-based personality differences clearly exists, the aetiology of those differences is not natural in a biological sense. Conversely, we learn from the year dot that we are expected to think and behave in certain ways according to our sex. That at times some of us do just that, in more or less degree, gives phoney creed to the evolutionary foundations of those personality traits (2012). Separating out which causes what to whom is a problematic given passing mention by the authors before they quickly move on to announce their own expansive set of ‘guidelines for the accurate quantification of sex differences in personality’, guidelines that emphasise measurement ‘at the level of narrow traits’ (2012).

What del Giudice et al. (2012) fail to grasp is that comparing men and women according to factors like…

• warmth,
• emotional stability,
• dominance and
• liveliness from, in this case, self-reports, tells us little more than that is how those men and women thought that they should respond to the questions asked at that particular point in time.

It reveals nothing about how each of those participants came to think that way nor does it reveal if they always think that way but most significantly, I would argue, it does not reveal if that is the way those participants practice or perform those personality traits, from one situation to the next. When bleating on about the need for accurate methodology and ‘accurate empirical data’ (2012), the irony is that the authors here seem so blissfully unaware of the shortcomings of their own research.

I would suggest that the critical gap in knowledge about this subject area is not to quantify the existence of sex-based personality traits but instead, to explore those discrete settings in which men and women conform to or deviate from social expectations of how they should behave. For example, anyone who subverts the commonly-held assumption that men bottle up their emotions, immediately raises important research questions like, what enabled that behaviour, was it against type, were there consequences for so behaving and would the subject do it again? Now that is a far more enlightening endeavour than trying to squeeze men and women and their grab bags of personality traits into pre-defined, sex-based pigeon holes!

Not born or made but a choice to be that way…

Can a mentally disordered citizen call upon the State to medically assist her or his suicide?

The simple answer to that question is ‘no’, since even in liberated Switzerland a callous distinction is made between who and who cannot access legal euthanasia on the basis of their presumed capacity…

‘The applicant in Haas had suffered from severe bipolar disorder for some 20 years, during which time he had twice attempted suicide, and spent several periods in psychiatric institutions. In 2004, he became a member of Dignitas, subsequently soliciting its assistance to commit suicide. However, unable to find a psychiatrist willing to prescribe a lethal dose of sodium pentobarbital, the applicant’s plans were frustrated’ (2012, n.pag.).

As is noted in this article (2012), the stumbling block for this gentleman was capacity, that is, the presumption made by the State that to be mad is to lack capacity to make such a critical decision. The impossible dilemma posed is that State expects that if one wants to check out prematurely, one must not be severely mentally unwell, since that is seen to be analogous with incapacity and yet, it is only when one who is ordinarily mentally unwell is severely so affected that she or he would be likely to contemplate a speedy exit from life. What was at large in the Haas decision was that nasty, ancient overhang by which the law washes itself of the factual evidence regarding mental health and instead defers sheepishly to psychiatry, to do its thinking for it…

‘The members of the medical profession have long and anxiously endeavoured to frame a definition of insanity, which is an attempt in a few words to exhibit the essential character of this disorder; so that it may be recognised when it exists; – these efforts have been hitherto fruitless, nor is there any rational expectation that this desideratum will be speedily accomplished. The Lawyer has taken a different view of the subject: he has been little solicitous to become acquainted with the physiological distinctions of disordered intellect, or the causes producing such state:- these he has confided to the medical evidence to explain…’ (Haslam, 1817).

My interest in this topic is far from purely academic. The product of a wrongful life, where the State proactively intervened to prevent my mother from actioning her considered choice to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, for my entire childhood and adolescence, I was knowingly left for dead by the State in a hellish home environment, where I was forced to spend every waking moment in sheer terror of anticipated abuse. From that abuse, I was left with the pervasive symptoms of complex trauma that have persisted to the present and will undoubtedly haunt me for the rest of my life. At many points across my troubled life I have been pushed to the precipice of suicide, fulfilling the first element in Haas, that is, that I was being caused suffering that led to me believing that my life was no longer worth living (2012).

For one, I am forever ‘stuck’ with the traumatic memories of that fateful night on 1 May 1998, when at the launch of the Human Rights Centre for Mental Health that I had developed with Kon Karapanagiotidis in Fitzroy, Melbourne, I was bashed by a trusted friend and colleague. That assault triggered in me the most extraordinary, overwhelming wave of torment that led me to later that same night beg my perpetrator to actually finish off what he had begun, that was, to kill me. As my life quickly unravelled after that vicious assault the same State that had forced my birth denied me the therapeutic support that would have facilitated my recovery. To the present, in fact, Catherine Branson, President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, has concluded that the State owes me no duty whatsoever to provide me with essential, psychological counselling.

The unfinished business of Haas is that it seemingly affords citizens who are mentally unwell the right to State assisted suicide but then, renders that practice all but impossible by invoking a raft of intervening checks and balances that militate against individual agency…

‘…the procedure developed in Haas is problematic insofar as mentally disordered individuals are subject to measures not imposed on individuals with somatic conditions. Individuals with somatic illness are not required to demonstrate that the wish to die is authentic – no distinction is made between the individual and the condition. Moreover, unlike individuals with somatic conditions, mentally disordered individuals may not decline alternatives, viz, treatment. However, if the underlying assumption with regard to mentally disordered individuals holds true for those with somatic conditions (that a wish to die is only authentic when the source of suffering is incurable), it would be illegitimate to allow any refusal of treatment with a greater than de minimis chance of extending life. Alternatively, the underlying assumption may be false – and the link between incurability and authenticity artificial’ (2012)…

See also: MacLeod, S. (2012). Assisted dying in liberalised jurisdictions and the role of psychiatry: A clinician’s view Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry DOI: 10.1177/0004867411434714

‘…the extant literature lacks a full understanding of gay men’s strengths and positive developmental processes related to their health. An unfortunate consequence of this gap in the literature is that health practitioners may lack the appropriate knowledge and training to implement a strength-based treatment approach with gay men. We suggest that interdisciplinary efforts are made to address this gap in both research and practice. Along those lines, health professionals should always critically examine the research they draw on when working with gay clients to avoid being influenced by the noted research limitations and negative implications of the deficit models. The adoption of a gay-affirmative perspective can be more beneficial to the health of gay clients and to the professional development of health practitioners’ (Isacco et al. 2012, n.pag.).

Much of what is written about gay men is not research but ideology-based, stuck in particular practice mindsets that are themselves stuck in particular cultural contexts. Predominantly, as Isacco et al. (2012) note here, gay men’s health is conceptualised from a deficit perspective, such that sickness is presumed, attributed, expected and confirmed, by others and bizarrely, often by the subject person himself. I recall that doctor in Sydney’s gay hub, Oxford Street, reaching across to rub my neck glands to check that I was not HIV+. I was not. I had come to him to discuss the impact of workplace bullying on my physical and mental health but he was more concerned in disputing my claims that I was actually in a long-term monogamous relationship.

Surely all gay men fuck around, right?

The fact is that if you look for deficits you will invariably find them. Health professionals and others typify gay men as weaker, flakier, sicker and madder than their straight counterparts not because a mountain of empirical evidence proves this extraordinary sexuality binary but rather, because they merely guess it to be so. In trying to figure out how gay men ever got to be so publicly trashed, the authors (2012) ponder those well worn excuses, among them minority stress, internalised homophobia and gender role socialisation. While these are important considerations, yes, for mine what really matters in coming to grips with the exaggerated pathology of gay men is self-evidently, the exaggerated pathology itself.

‘…we found that a collated body of research indicated that gay men are at an increased risk for self-harm, suicide ideation, eating disorders, legal and illegal substance abuse, tobacco use, panic attacks, depressive symptoms, and underutilization of health care services. A lack of research on the strengths of gay men and positive health outcomes compounds the focus on deficits’ (Isacco et al. 2012).

The lie that resides in the dynamic between health professional or other and the gay man is that the latter is presumed by either of the former to be intrinsically defective goods. This unsavoury practice constructs the observed subject as the problem and therefore leads to the inevitable outcome that we treat you badly because you deserve to be treated badly. For the gay man, he can either accept this ‘spoiled identity’ (Goffman 1963) or he can fight it. With homophobia ever present and usually surreptitious, I am not surprised that many of my gay brothers learn to play along as distinct from outing their own true identities. The macro crush by the gay rights movement to prove that we are straighter than straight exemplifies a collective form of this passive, stigma acceptance.

By providing a cook’s shopping list of myths about gay men and how those myths might be challenged by health professionals and others, Isacco et al. (2012) are providing a public service and yet are, concurrently, reinforcing those exact same myths they wish to unseat. For example, to put it out there that gay men are no more likely than their straight counterparts to molest children (2012) is to raise the possibility that perhaps the converse is true. Ditto with the myth that ‘all gay men are feminine’ (as if any man being ‘feminine’ can be pejorative state, anyway). To be fair to the authors (2012), there are few tasks more daunting than trying to change for the better, entrenched negative behaviours and attitudes.

Curiously missing from the aforementioned list is that myth that all gay men are on the edge, that is, that we are about to plunge into unsafe sex, substance misuse, self-harm, insanity or suicide. I would argue that health professionals and others are increasingly prone to characterise gay men as quaking buildings crumbling, a disturbing view that is also shared by many within the broader, LGBTI community. The self-defeating paradox of promoting us hapless fags as totally sick as a means to combat the hateful stigma directed toward us, seems nonetheless impervious to rebuttal. That is why I wholeheartedly agree with the authors (2012) that health professionals and others ‘should always critically examine (emphasis added) the research they draw on when working with gay clients’.

Making up things as you go along simply does not cut it…

I retell that sordid tale now after reading a story in the New York Times, regarding a stoush between the Catholic Church and the State in Illinois over competing rights. That is, the right to freedom of religion versus the right of us gays and lesbians to freedom from discrimination. I share the view enunciated in this story, that when taking government funds to do government business, the Catholic Church cannot thereafter engage in discriminatory practices in the conduct of that business. In the United States, as here in Australia, we thankfully live in pluralist, secular societies, where the separation of Church and State exists for good reason, since the primary duty of such civilised societies is to uphold the right of every citizen, to be.

The Catholic Church has had a long, twisted history of persecuting, torturing and otherwise abusing individuals who it deems ‘unfit’ because of their homosexual or other transgressive sexualities. For bigots within that morally bankrupt organisation to then screech that they themselves are being discriminated against is to forget that freedom of religion has its limits. Quite obviously, no freedom can ever be utilised to purposefully cause harm to others, in this case to those gays and lesbians who put up their hands to be adoptive and foster parents. While doctrinally, adherents of the Catholic faith might be entitled to cling to the belief that homosexuality is a sin, no government funded service can make a determination that the capacity to care for children hinges on whether one is straight, or not…

By beating up this vulnerability regime, our minds are distracted from the fluctuating, compounded and at times conflicting issues that underlie why any citizen might feel compelled to purposefully check out of life, in advance of their actual use-by date. Was depressed, secretly or otherwise, has become the common explanation touted post event, for the vast majority of suicidal subjects almost as if to say, had they been medicated they would still be alive today. That we seldom know if these people were really, clinically depressed and even if they were, was it that depression that pushed them over the edge, hardly seems to matter. We like to think of suicide as stemming from an individual’s fucked-up mind because that lets everything and everyone (including the suicidal subject, her or himself) off the hook. And yes, it concurrently lionises the magic pill as the suicide prevention industry’s eternal, glimmering hope. In the presence of all that puffery, the bold conversations that need to be had about suicide are stifled by a shared imperative to perpetuate the big lie. In response, serious thinkers like David Webb remain locked out of the suicide prevention industry tent with those punters therein, pitifully engaged in a never-ending process of mutual arse licking that has nought to do with promoting life…

Well, not at least the lives of the suicidal…

Oh, by the way, the average Australian driver has the intellect of an 11-year-old, gender not specified…