Oppression masquerading as liberation

Are you feeling better or worse at the end of the night? It's a question I started asking myself on a gay holiday, and I haven't been able to stop asking it.

The first time I went to the gay hotel in Torremolinos, I had a great time. I had a holiday romance, I made some holiday friends, and it was very cute, very sweet. I didn't find the love of my life, but I felt welcome, like people wanted to spend time with me.

Then I went again the next year, to the same hotel, and it felt very different. It was all Grindr and cruising. Everything was rainbow and primary colours, and everyone looked in the photos like they were getting on really well. But when I looked around at the pool, no one was really talking to each other at all, except maybe the people they came with. As I said on Flex Your Feelings, I think a large part of that is the context, in which sex is so primary and Grindr is so prevalent. It becomes much easier to text someone on Grindr than to turn to the person next to you and say, "Hey, how are you doing?"

I was walking around and I just thought: why am I spending my money to come to a gay place to feel bad about myself? Why, as a gay guy, do I choose to spend my money on a specifically gay location, when I could spend it anywhere, and end up feeling rubbish about myself, like a piece of meat, or treating other people like a piece of meat?

The environment does it to us, and we do it to each other

I have zero problem with cruising if people want to do it. But when that is the modus operandi of gay holidays, I don't think that's great. What was missing was an alternative.

When I wrote about that trip on our site, I put it like this: I wondered how much easier it would be to connect if sex wasn't the currency and people didn't feel like products on the shelf. I told QX Magasin the same thing: "The environment and context create the hunt for sex just as much as we ourselves do, and every time we participate in it, the pattern is reinforced even more."

It's the same at a big party. I remember being on a bus to a party in Madrid. Everyone takes their tops off straight away. Everyone's dancing and no one is chatting to each other. These guys are so hot, they have great bodies, they seem really happy, and they all know each other. So, as I said on Flex Your Feelings: "If it's so good, why do you need to be off your face?" It's very pretty armour. It looks good. But it is armour, and you can't get out of it.

Where the trauma comes from now

People talk about gay trauma growing up. I really do believe that is true to an extent. But nowadays, in places like Spain and the UK, where we're lucky to have so many more rights than we used to, I really feel like we perpetuate trauma to each other as gay people. The way we treat people, again and again and again, just opens it up, and it's much more actively painful than anything from the past.

Section 28 was repealed in 2003, I think, and I came out around 2004 without even knowing what Section 28 was. A teacher once said to me, "You didn't get this because you're gay." So I know it can be difficult, and people have their own personal stories around their sexuality, their family and their life. But do I feel like I've spent my adult life having problems being gay? Very, very rarely. And people who are 20 now in the UK have lived in the most extraordinary freedom that's ever been.

I said this on Flex Your Feelings and I'll say it again here: I don't think we can link the historical context of discrimination and anti-gay laws to how we behave now. We have to take responsibility for it. We go on Grindr. We treat other guys like pieces of meat, and we let them treat us like pieces of meat. That perpetuates it way more than any historical context. The treatment of Oscar Wilde has no impact on the fact that when you're on Grindr, someone is in bed with you and they're talking to the next person on Grindr.

Choosing a break from it

No Sex Gay Weekend is an affront to some people. Good. In a hypersexualised gay world, we often facilitate and perpetuate the cycle of treating other people, and ourselves, as objects. The project is there to stop that cycle, for a weekend at least, by making a conscious effort to change how we behave.

I don't want to forbid anyone from cruising. I give people the option to choose a break from it for a while. Start from a great base, and go away feeling great, not empty.

It is so easy to perpetuate our own oppression. Especially when the oppression is masquerading as liberation.

What the weekends are, and the one rule, is on WTF is NSGW.