Sunday, 24 May 2015

Hold your breath for the Hermaphrodite!




Oh Horror! Oh Tragedy! Oh Unjust and Undeserved Irony! On the very same day that Ireland voted overwhelmingly for the legalisation of gay marriage (congrats, ye Emerald Islanders; Ah, if only you showed such backbone, stamina and wisdom in your referendums on EU diktats and ukases!)… Exactly on that happy day, then, a Swedish homophobe wins the European Song Contest in Vienna!!

Is it a sinister revenge of Male Pig Chauvinism? Is it Karma’s cynical way to compensate an unexpected swing of mankind’s moral pendulum? Was it perhaps a rigged election, paid for by the taxes of the Tea Party? I can hardly believe it. But truly mindboggling it is, dear reader! For the ESC is now famously a gay love feast, an agape of alternative lifestyles. Over the last 25 years or so, it has developed slowly but most surely into a party of the pansies, by the pansies and for the pansies – to use the charming, if somewhat anachronistic, idiom of my youth....

The juvenile fool in question, by the name of Mans Zelmerlow, declared during his participation in a cooking program on national Swedish television (certainly one of the most macho activities that we know of…!) that he considered homosexuality ‘unnatural’ and ‘an abnormality’ and added that gays really should not be allowed to adopt children or produce them by way of hired surrogate mothers… He then added that he had absolutely nothing against homosexuals; an assurance which he repeated ad nauseam during the following days when the scandal broke over his not too well endowed little head…

For yes, you surely can imagine the outcry, reader dear! All along the line, Gay Rights activists denounced the young hulk, and the entire confederacy of Song Festival Soothsayers predicted that this would cost him countless votes and, most probably, the Prize. Well, surprise surprise: they were wrong. Indeed it may have cost the fellow votes (and just imagine what a landslide he might have enjoyed without that lamentable faux pas!), but he did rise comfortably to the top of the chards in the end, and the immortal laurels of a European Song Context victory were his… Soon, I expect, he will repair the damage done to his PR by appearing in public with a notorious, elderly, outspoken homosexual – Elton John, say, or Liberace – and with a little luck we may hear him say that some of his best friends are fagg---…. gays!

Yet the damage is done, dear reader, and it cannot be allowed to remain that way! The ESC badly needs to reaffirm its Gay Credentials after this most unfortunate incident! And there is only one way to go about it: a new, original, even more daring and audacious example of Alternative Lifestyles must be allowed to compete and win Europe’s yearly bonfire of good taste and musical talent. Unfortunately that is no easy matter. A simply Gay or Lesbian performer will no longer do the trick. That has become common, blasé, jaded even. The new figurehead needs to be far more eye-catching, flamboyant, and undeniably symbolic for the Triumph of Tolerance in the Fight for Equal Rights. But where does one find such a figure, after the 1998 success of Israel’s Dana International, a transsexual, and last year’s coup by Conchita Wurst, the crooning Bearded Lady? How many more variations of mutated, intertwined gender biology are out there, ready to storm the stage?

Well, take it from an old man, who has seen many splendours of human creativity flower over a long lifetime. There are still two such specimen available, who will live up to the task, and of whom I hope to welcome at least one in the Sweden festival next year. The first is a functioning, certified Hermaphrodite. This would, as a matter of fact, be my first choice, since it is only one step up the ladder from the bearded lady we already enjoyed. Unfortunately, there is a catch to that. In order for the world to really see and believe that it is a singing Hermaphrodite it is watching on the telly, that person would have to, well… show the various assets openly; and this may of course run counter to European rules of media decency which of late are getting no more lenient.


Possible flashy outfit of the next ESC winner


So, possibly, we will have to settle for the next best thing still waiting in the wings: the pregnant man. No, don’t laugh! Don’t scoff at poor Alfred B Mittington! For this jewel of the surgeons’ art is already a reality. Back in the States a few years ago, a transsexual gentleman, who had made sure that the doctors, during the necessary interventions and operations, left the existing feminine reproductive organs in place, gave birth to a child (the first of several as it happens). And it was recently revealed (see here) that in Australia, which yesterday for the first time was allowed to participate and to vote in the European Song Contest, no fewer than 54 babies were born to men.

So: for the Good of Diversity and the dignity of next year’s European Song Contest, let’s just hope one of those happy antipodean Heila’s knows how to sing and dance… !




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