"I know what bullying looks like. It's not what anti-equality activists say it is."

This piece was originally published on Guardian Australia, on the 19th of May 2017. Available here.

--------

 ‘The event was a vigil to mourn the deaths of the gay and bisexual men in Chechnya, who are, to this day, being detained and murdered by their governments and families, simply for being gay.’

The same-sex marriage debate continues to rage in Australia, despite the public shame of recently being labelled a second-tier nation by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans & Intersex Association.

The ongoing storm of useless argument was displayed once more on Tuesday night, when Network Ten’s The Project aired a segment discussing an incident in which an anti-equality activist smashed a pie in the face of Alan Joyce to protest the Qantas CEO’s support for marriage equality.

In the segment, the Australian Christian Lobby’s Lyle Shelton argued that opponents of same-sex marriage were being forced to endure bullying for their views.

As a gay person living in Australia, I continue to be amazed and endlessly frustrated by the so-called “debates” we’re forced to endure on our screens – particularly when words such as “bullying” are tossed around exclusively by members of the heterosexual mainstream.

More than that, I’m baffled by the assertions of Lyle Shelton – and others in the anti-equality movement – that they’re somehow under constant fire from a violent tempest of harassment.

Because frankly, these people have no idea what real bullying looks like.

I’ll never forget my 13th birthday. Not for the presents or the cake, but for the fact that I was beaten so badly in the schoolyard that I was taken to first aid, all for being a little bit different. As I wiped my bloodied chin in front of the nurse while recounting the story, it took all of my strength not to burst into tears – because I knew exactly why they’d targeted me.

My adolescence was littered with these experiences: being shouted at in the street by boys much older than me, approached in the schoolyard by packs of lads, sinisterly being asked “So, I heard you’re a faggot”, and cornered in dark laneways by people who’d somehow heard of me, of my left-of-centre orientation, and took it as an opportunity to aggress.

Even now, in my mid-20s, I am left with at best a lingering anxiety, and at worst a crippling fear, about stepping onto a train, or a bus, because I don’t know who might be aboard. I count every face instinctively; fearing one might carry markers of my high school abusers. I sit up the front, making myself as small as possible, because I never know if I might be “spotted” – identified as a homosexual and subsequently bashed, all for being too visible.

On Tuesday night – at the same time The Project segment aired – I was walking home from a trip to inner-city Melbourne, when a group of lads proceeded to aggressively shout and holler at me, commenting on my “poofter shirt” and rainbow brooch. I ignored them and hustled away, knowing any reaction could trigger violence.

What they didn’t know was that I had come from an event in the city centre. My pink shirt was worn in solidarity, my brooch a symbol of gay pride. The event was a vigil to mourn the deaths of the gay and bisexual men in Chechnya, who are, to this day, being detained and murdered by their governments and families, simply for being gay. Simply for being just like me; the very me those street louts were snarling at, and the one Shelton wants to deny rights.

That’s what bullying looks like. That’s harassment. That’s a level of contempt that borders on criminal.

These aren’t my experiences alone. They are those echoed by the larger LGBTI community. Some are lesser, and some disastrously worse but all need be reiterated, so that the mainstream – and the Sheltons of the world – can understand why granting marriage equality not only allows us the right to marry, but further proves to our children that gay people are equal, and that difference is not alien.

If Shelton wishes to complain about the censure of his views and opinions, which only serve to further marginalise those already in strife, he best choose his words more carefully. Because his attitudes, as Guardian columnist Van Badham said to him on The Project, are retrograde and reprehensible, and the criticism he receives for these views looks nothing like the bullying I’ve endured my entire life.

"How American Gods changed the game for gay sex on TV"

This piece was published for Guardian Australia, on Wednesday 17th of May 2017. Available here.

--------

Throughout the history of media, the portrayal of sex has been consistently met with varying shades of outrage. Yet no graphic depiction has felt the wrath quite like that of homosexuality.

This week, American Gods offered up a new addition to the canon – and in terms of male gay sex on television, it was a game-changer: an explicit, frank and deeply intimate moment between two Muslim men of colour.

The way sex between men is shown on TV depends on what you’re watching. In more boundary-pushing representations – such as in the graphic scenes from How to Get Away With Murder – it drips with debauchery. In other progressive shows, such as Josh Thomas’ lauded Please Like Me, it’s presented with the kind of fumbling awkwardness so known to gay millennials.

And then, of course, there’s the “straight-friendly” mainstream takes, in which the gay man is often depicted as almost entirely sexless – see Will & Grace, or the gay couple in Modern Family.

But this week’s episode of American Gods seemed woven from the nightmares of the far right. It involved CGI penises and a very evident climax, with sexual positions that had to be re-shot after complaints from the editing suite. (“You guys need to go back and figure out where holes are,” showrunner Bryan Fuller told the team.) And it presented the very kind of sex conservatives have worked so hard to stigmatise – a random hook-up between strangers – with an intimacy that’s never been shown before on mainstream TV.

Based on the Neil Gaiman novel of the same name, American Gods follows the journey of an ex-con named Shadow Moon, enlisted as the bodyguard of an actual god – one of many brought into existence by the sheer belief of their worshippers. Moon is taken on a journey of deities and mystical creatures, who are living in uncanny harmony with our world.

Each episode includes a “Coming to America” sequence, which depicts how these divine beings interact with humans. And in Sunday’s episode, we saw an Omani salesman named Salim (Omid Abtahi), face worn from the trials of his tedious job, step out of the rain and into a taxi – which happened to be driven by a djinni in human form (played by Mousa Kraish): a supernatural creature from early Arabian and Islamic mythology, with fire burning in his eyes.

The two sit in the city traffic and engage in small talk about their lives. When Salim attempts to wake the sleeping djinni, who has dozed off in the drivers’ seat, he witnesses what his driver truly is with a glimpse of those fiery eyes. Their conversation becomes meaningful, as the two discover more of one another from the confines of the cab. The djinni jokes that people always ask him to grant wishes.

Salim offers the djinni his hotel room number, and what follows is arguably one of the most explicit man-on-man sex scenes ever aired on mainstream television. But the sequence is more than simple titillation; it is a truly evocative and emotional vignette. We see vulnerability laid bare upon a hotel bed, when the weakened Salim meets another worn soul – no matter how fantastical – and each offers the other refuge from their loneliness.

And it all happens between two gay Muslim men, a section of the population stigmatised from all sides who barely get a look-in on mainstream TV. In that, even the casting becomes groundbreaking.

TwitterPinterest

Intimacy between men is something that both the straight and gay communities have struggled to depict with honesty for decades. The mainstream straight community has tarnished our sex lives, rendering our desires as somehow intrinsically damaged. This happens in the real world as a consequence of the fear that sprung up from the AIDS crisis, and it also happens on our screens – seen recently when director Bill Condon revealed his remake of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast would feature a warm-hearted and exclusively gay moment, a fact that sent shockwaves of outrage through the conservative world.

Which is why this chapter in American Gods between Salim and the djinni offers so much more than the usual; it takes a series of taboos and transforms them into a 10-minute long sequence which literally transports the men up into the heavens mid-way through the act, and which fulfils desires we all share – desires for unconditional love, and comfort.In mainstream gay television, sex is presented as something wielded with reckless abandon in shows like Queer As Folk or, more recently, Looking. It’s the same hyper-sexualised imagery that feeds gay nightclub advertorials and community events: images of ripped studs and beefy bodies, a focus on aesthetic glory. In our fight to gain the freedom to be sexual, and in defiance of societal typecasting, we’ve abandoned sensitivity in favour of eroticism, and embraced sexiness over sympathy – and sometimes even over soul.

“I do not grant wishes,” the djinni says. To which Salim replies: “But you do.”

When such intimacy between two men can be broadcast to an audience of millions, we are shown that the ways of portraying gay sex can be reframed. That sex between men – even men who are strangers – can be as tender, loving and vulnerable as any other, from the comfort of a warm bed.

"What it's really like to have your drink spiked"

This piece was published for News.com.au on the 13th of May, 2017. Available here.

--------

ON Anzac Day Eve this year, a frolicking night out became a wakeful nightmare.

I was a few beers deep, mingling with the crowds at my local haunt — when at some point in the night, I felt a strangeness wash over me.

It was as if a massive wave of panic had managed to infiltrate my brain; adrenaline ran through me and I was thrown into a tailspin.

I assumed this was an anxiety attack and took myself home. Yet the feelings continued; I lay awake in my bed for hours. My stomach turned and my head pulsed with maddening panic, to the point where I debated hospital.

After some time, calculating the beers I’d had versus the way I was feeling, it became clear that my drink had been spiked.

I wouldn’t have known it, if it hadn’t already happened to me.

Experts believe that the majority of drink spikings occur as a prank. Often it’s assumed that spiking occurs with intent to sexually assault someone — however this only accounts for one-third of all spikings. The sad fact is that most of the time it’s the result of a cold-hearted lout looking to get laughs. To purposefully endanger someone’s life for a joke.

The first time my drink was spiked, in 2012, I nearly lost my life.

I was a night-life photographer living la vida loca in the city of Melbourne. I was on the job … and with that job came certain benefits, like drink vouchers. Everything was going swimmingly. I must have set down my glass.

Brandon Cook with fellow photographer Daisy Hofstetter. Picture: Daisy HofstetterSource:Supplied

My memory gets very foggy then. One minute I was at the bar. The next, I’m in an alleyway, on my phone, complaining about feeling strange.

A flash — I’m on a train, vomiting bile onto the floor. Flash forward — in a car, Dad in the driver’s seat. I’m green and blue and every colour I shouldn’t be. They claimed they’d never seen anyone that messed up before.

Hours later, I couldn’t keep food or liquids down. All I could feel was pain and delirium. Then my chest began to race — far too fast. I screamed in fear and pain as Mum scrambled to call 000. I had to be taken in to hospital due to irregularities of my heart.

That episode led to me getting heart surgery to rectify whatever issue the drink spiking had caused.

Doctors performed keyhole surgery on my heart, feeding wires via my groin, to perform an ablation. Basically they had to locate the parts of my heart that were malfunctioning and burn or “ablate” them.

I spent the next few months in recovery. All from what was most likely someone else’s idea of mischief.

Of course, the recovery didn’t end there. In the years that followed, I dealt with major psychological issues. I grew mistrustful around drinks. I struggled to consume fluids, even in my own house, because my brain would tell me that my drink was spiked — even if those drinks were accepted from members of my family.

Brandon Cook. Picture: Brandon CookSource:Supplied

There’s only been one study done in Australia on the prevalence of drink spiking, involving only 44 cases — many muddied up as they rely on victims’ disclosures rather than actual toxicology reports from hospitals.

This leads people to feel sceptical of those who claim to have been spiked, dismissing them as binge drinkers. The reality is that most don’t have the tools to recognise it as a problem, let alone to understand that it’s happening to them.

And yet I know that so many people in the community deal with these issues, because venue managers and hospitality staff I know have to handle the outcomes. To the point where it’s common practice for staff to get rid of half-empty glasses if they’ve been left unattended, because you simply can’t trust patrons not to put drugs in them.

Yet so many people dismiss the risk of spiking, being careless with their booze and flippant on their nights out.

So look after yourselves on your nights out. Keep a close eye on your drinks. And if you feel that massive wave of panic, do what I was nearly too late to do: Take yourselves to hospital.

There’s no shame in seeking care because you suspect that a crime has been committed. And I’d rather go to hospital and be told I’m fine — than go home in a heap, head pulsing with maddening panic, nowhere near fine at all.