Welcome

Another day in paradise sigh...

Was watching the horrifically annoying Tanya Byron on the BBC player last night and it proved to be the last straw in my continuous fight to avoid starting a blog. So as you can see I lost!

The premise of am I normal seems to be one based on the idea that normal as Tanya Byron seems to see it, actually exists. From dogging to Gaydar via mens lavatories and glory holes our Tanya politely and with suitably squeamish behavior (nose holding, sniffing and looking all psychologist serious at the correct points) guided us through the peccadilloes and delights of the odd queer, some dogging pervs and and finally the whorey old chestnut that is the paedophile so we are all left in no uncertain terms the amount of disgust we are required to show when faced with the question of children and sex.

Andrew Billen in the Times kindly elucidated much of my sentiments in his short but sweet article.

and I do believe his closing statement which reads:

"It struck me that these days we deal with the range of human sexuality rather well by having established-in-law the principle that what consenting adults do in private is their own affair. It is psychologists who confuse matters."

However I think that it is somewhat more than that. They don't just confuse matters they positively stoke the fire and make things worse. Witness her chillingly shallow attempt to brand the poor gay fellow as abused because he had random sex in a toilet when he was fourteen. Hinting that his entire sexual persona is a direct result of this one insignificant and no doubt quite randy event. She placates us further by being kind enough to explain that gay men often had sex furtively in toilets (and in general) due to societies intolerance.

Her target, Martin, seemed to agree that the idea of furtive sex is driven by the way gay men were treated, and i concur. What they both seem to have misunderstood is the depth to which the furtive and clandestine nature of gay mens sexual acts has been affected by the criminalization that they suffered for over a hundred years. It strikes me that this is now so ingrained into gay culture that it is certainly normative for many and an interesting dalliance every now and again for the rest.

As for the inclusion of dogging, why? Most heterosexual behavior is already pre-defined as normal because heterosexuality; despite our enlightened times is still seen as normal, or to be vaguely Orwellian "more normal.". Nobody generally questions the activities of straight people in terms of normal or not, just in how shocking it is and how many papers it is liable to sell, which of course depends entirely on the status of the celebrity.

Tanya, oh so understanding Tanya, assures us that dogging is neither perversion nor disorder, yet bemoans the loss of her clinical surroundings that force her to evaluate how she will react. As what? A human being perhaps? The schizophrenic nature of this statement is quite chilling, as a psychologist she can handle this or that, but outside the clinical surroundings who knows.

The vocabulary of abuse raises its ugly head as she describes dogging as firstly predatory, then sinister. When it comes to the stripper she hearkens back to the childhood of the chap in a way to explain or try to understand the psychological underpinnings of why he carries out this sinister, predatory, oh and by the way neither perversion nor disorder act. Within minutes he has picked up the same vocabulary and is describing other activities as sinister himself. Just for your interest he is apparently punishing his mother. Its all such a psycho bore.

Scat, pissing, fisting et al were on the menu for discussion, and the usual root cause psychological cover alls like divorce, abuse and low self esteem trotted out regularly, just so we did not feel we were on to unfamiliar ground.

It was nonsense the majority of it, and the addition of the conversation with the deluded paedophile at the end was really only their to stop this BBC production from being more suitable for Channel 5 late night showing. It also gave us a get out clause, you may be gay, practice fisting, pissing, stripping, dogging or any other manner of activity but don't worry, your fine, that fucker over their is a paedo!

Wonderfully, whilst discussing sex in toilets in a toilet (why?) someone was smart enough to take a shit in the cubicle while she stood by horrified holding her nose. Give that man a medal.