Ah, the Dutch. So laid-back. So babe-like. So forward-thinking.
And so pragmatic.
This will shock you, but there are other countries where being gay is really not that big a thing, and your very existence is not an immediate threat to the nation at large. I don’t mean places like Oz or Narnia. Real terra firma lands.
The Netherlands is not only able to exist without constantly having to give the guys the side-eye — it’s actually willing to allot them an established stomping ground.
A park within a stone’s throw of Amsterdam is taking a nouveau approach to the earth-shattering issue of men having at within its environs. Rather than trotting out the police to start roping in men with their pants around their ankles and their heads in their hands, officials have opted for a decidedly more novel live-and-let live approach: signs alerting park-goers that they’re approaching the vicinity of a known cruising zone.
Relates municipal spokeswoman Manon Koffijberg: “If you don’t want to be confronted by a vision of that sort, the signs allow you to avoid specific areas. There are various groups of users of the park; people with small children who bathe on the beaches, those who walk their dogs, gays cruising and nature lovers. Things are arranged so that each group can relax in their own area without intruding on each other.”
Whither the public outrage, the news footage of completely extraneous kiddies playing on lawns who might be privy to the horrors of victimless public sex? What about the Heteropatriarchy and its pandering demagogues with its “Fags Doom Nations” rhetoric?
The sum total of outcry from the locals: “Meh, whatev. Fair enough. It’s a big park” And the police actually patrol to protect the gays from any retaliatory assaults that might occur. Wacky!
I had a straight male friend in college whose father was a retired police officer who once had a beat in Central Park in the pre-gentrified 1980s. When we weren’t being mistaken for brothers, we were thought to be boyfriends. My freshman year, while we were out walking, he pointed to the once-notorious Rambles — legendary site of nighttime gay encounters since the ’20s, as well as danger zone for a slew of grisly het-on-gay attacks in the late ’70s perpetrated by roving gangs of self-styled vigilantes (read: drunk-ass neighborhood goons from the block and corrupt off-duty cops).
It all seemed like something from another time to me, and with the area not as heavily-frequented as it once was during its heyday, that’s true to an extent. Still, the mythic luridness of the spot lives on. Many was the time the two of us would be in the vicinity and men of a certain age would wink or turn to give us the once-over as we passed. One time a group of other kids was laughing at us as they sat on the grass, prompting him to bellow “Fuck off! We’re only friends, and we’re just walking here!”
I felt just like Joe Buck to his Ratso Rizzo.
It’s reactive vitriol from that sector of America determined to turn every acre of the country into a massive, blandly placid suburb that’s missing from Holland’s response. Invariably, the Right’s answer when it comes to confronting anything it can’t comprehend is to declare war on it with the intent of eradicating it and salting the earth. Within the past thirty years alone, we’ve had the War on Poverty, the War on AIDS, the War on Drugs, the War on Illiteracy, and the War on Terror, all clashes of attrition with each salvo more futile and impotent. The writhing insects still teem beneath the hyper-cultivated and immaculate David Lynchian lawns.
Vice stings, decoys, and late night news walks of shame have been as effective in putting the curb on cruising as they have been in driving out prostitution; the working girls and johns are back out on the street in no time, just as the guys on the prowl remain undaunted. The effect isn’t exorcism of social ills. It’s just brief displacement. New public decency campaigns — everything from proposed gay travel bans to plans for stalls that automatically open to reveal any malfeasance within — are as inane as they are impractical.
But what about little Johnny and Susie? Well, fuck them. Hand-wringing Momists who pop out precious little darlings end up raising more narcissistic Neo-Victorians who expect the world to mirror their own back yard. And all the fear-mongering about moppets happening upon strangers in mid-rut isn’t even realistic.
To quote Dan Savage: “Most cruisers go out of their way to avoid detection—most of ‘em are closeted, straight-identified men who live in terror of being arrested or discovered. (And yet they’re out there taking this huge risk—people are nuts.) If you go looking for cruisers, you can find them. If you’re not looking for ‘em, they’re usually very hard to spot, and they tend to get it on in spots that are extremely secluded and at times when the general public isn’t making use of them.”
If you move the wife and kiddies into the Castro, don’t have a hissy fit when Bobby asks you how much is that dildo in the window.
In the end, the over-coddled little future Homeowners’ Association members of the world can only benefit from the slight frisson of walk-on-the-wild-side jitters from just possibly having to trot past a casino, a gentlemen’s club, an adult video store, or a twilight ramble — all those terrifying sectors of difference and dread that are forever being blocked or sanitized from the neighborhood — with any regularity.
The reality is that a dash of smut in all of our lives is healthy because we need borders, not just ones we’re not inclined to cross, but ones others are.
In the end, it just can’t be all about you all the time.
Opening illustration by Josman. For more of Josman’s work, JOIN US INSIDE the Inner Circle.
OK, so I’m moving to the netherlands. How sane can one country be?
Eh, we tend to hyperbolize differences when we compare one country to another. Especially when one of them is one we reside in, and the other one isn’t. We either demonize the other and elevate ourselves, or vice versa.
I don’t really think the Netherlands are much different from the U.S. They are certainly 2-3 steps to the left, politically, and are less religious. That said, there are obviously still religious people there, just as there are plenty of non-religious people in the U.S.
The Netherlands probably look a lot like the United States: more liberal in the cities, mixed in the suburbs and conservative in the backcountry. Religious conservatives are more anti-gay and urbanites are more gay-friendly.
We know of New York and San Fransisco as gay Meccas, tolerant if anything at all. Leave Alabama and visit Manhattan for a month and that impression would be, initially, confirmed. But after a while subtleties creep in; maybe not life-changing experiences, but just cues that some prejudice is there. Maybe the cops seem to be just a LITTLE harder on gay guys. Maybe a teenaged girl’s desperate wish for a gay friend is just a LITTLE bit patronizing. Maybe your boss, who is pretty chummy with his masculine male employees in the office, skipped over you for that promotion because you were gay. Maybe the public advertising involves a few false assumptions about gays, and every now and then you come across the raving lunatic who thinks the gays and Jews are conspiring together to overthrow Western Civilization.
The same is certainly true for the Netherlands. Visit the country for a few weeks, and you’ll be convinced that Amsterdam is paradise. But if you stay long enough, reality creeps in.
Nowhere on Earth is there Eden. Nor are places like the Middle East as hellish for gays as we think. There is quite a scene in Dubai.
In other news, the War on Povery and War on AIDS were causes of the Right, as the piece seems to imply? I’m lost on that one.
We are grand, thank you.
“In other news, the War on Povery and War on AIDS were causes of the Right, as the piece seems to imply? I’m lost on that one.”
Well, both were essentially liberal causes that that were co-opted and subsequently hampered by the go-to “Government is not the answer” line of Republican administrations without much in the way of good faith investment. If if you want to argue they weren’t blazing successes to begin with, that’s your choice, but Right Wing intervention ultimately turned them into utter unmitigated debacles.
The Right argued that government spending failed to ameliorate poverty. True or not, its response was cutting programs, and its stance that augmenting the prosperity of the top-earners would stem down the ladder (remember trickle-down economics?) has only substantially broadened the gap between rich and poor. Rather than battle poverty, the Bush League opted to simply declare war on the inconveniently stagnant poor.
One of Bush’s sole graces was his increase of AIDS-related aid to Africa. Fair enough, but his continued emphasis on Abstinence-Only programs, his attempts at “debunking” the myth that condom usage is an effective preventative, and his undermining of world aid organizations who don’t fall in line with Neo-Conservative Pro-Life dogma only succeeded in putting millions of more lives at risk.
Remarks:::
man I agree with your comments totally there is no Eden on earth and human beings love to change and look forward to try living in new places…
we make it worth while with our contributions, gay or straight. we deserve to live in peace.
yep,
there are some rays of light shining from the muslim dominated local authorities around the outskirts of Amsterdam: they are sick of being identified as intolerant religious fanatic immigrants from retarded rural areas. And are vigourously combatting the last sad remains of true intolerant immigrant cultures. Canal Pride this year will most likely start off from Amsterdam West.
On the other hand the “so called” tolerant and rich inner city inhabitants have elected themselves local authorities that thinks it’s a good idea to clean up their famous red light district. Like many other half hearted measures, (drug tolerance for selling but not for growing), this only chases away tourists, and forces prostitution (that had been legalised some 10 years ago) into completely un-controlled dangerous and un-safe internet solliciting.
and Indeed, Amsterdam is not like the rest of the country: the biggest cruising area after the one you mentioned is on the Amsterdam Den Haag Rotterdam highway and is on the grounds of a retarded christian fanatic agricultural village called Pijnacker,
that thinks they can continue arresting cruising guys, while our national lawmakers have ruled years ago that there is nothing criminal in lowering your pants when it is not meant to offend and/or visible from public roads.
The point of the article is not that the Netherlands are some sort of gay Eden, but that the idea of creating a pristine space free of tawdry (but harmless) sexual shenanigans is itself a pipe dream that the sex-paranoiacs of America need to give up already.
Applause to the Netherlands. Some friends and I have been advocating for a public fisting space in San Francisco for the past year. A safe, clean, discreet, out of doors location, where consenting adults can engage in totally harm-free sexual activity without fear of police recrimination. We pay for the parks too, we should be entitled to use them as we wish.
fist friend,
Ouch come on now… sex is (or ought to be) an act of love and fisting in my mind is not what love is about. Not even sexual exploitation, I am not that open minded when it comes to risky sex. Call me old fashion, but how many times did we regret casual sex or perhaps sex with a stranger in a party. Public fisting – dear fistfriend- is quite a view not to mention should public sex be allowed in the first place, considering the notion that sex is a private matter will be a step forward toward the idea of a special fisting tournament as part of the Olympic games one day.
I am thinking why not uh: if you build it they will cum : right?
Yeah, yeah . . . like we used to say back in Missouri: the grass is always greener on the other side . . . of the Atlantic.Paradise it’s not!
love you alllll
Who was it said, “In America sex is an obsession. In the rest of the world it’s a fact.”…?
It was Eric Idle who said, “In America, religion is all about sex.”
Here in the UK we’re halfway between America and the rest of the world. Here no one cares about religion but everyone’s obsessed with sex. In fact, the one thing that turns lifelong, shoulder-shrugging agnostics into demented bible-bashers is…mansex.
Not the existence of gay people, not lesbians having sex, not gay male couples being happy and monogamous together – mansex. Men having sex with each other.
That’s why all our out gay male celebrities are painfully asexual – including the ones from America. They can talk about it all the time, and it’s seen as good family fun, but if there’s the slightest hint they DO it, they’re dropped from TV and vilified in the newspapers.
uh, Kapitano
Are you insinuating that most Brits, people working in TV are hypocrites?
I mean Jude Law being unfaithful to his wife when he slept with his baby sitter was not the least bashed but gained more media coverage instead. Sex is sex be it straight or gay the difference is what makes it a big deal. Imagine a world of straights or all gay … would not it be boring.
Well, do you know how can i break into the UK acting scene any ideas, no porn but main stream film work.