I had dinner with four Uni friends last night, who I met when we were all mature students some twenty years ago, all women and all very much my kind of women – bright, intelligent, funny, with a great work ethic, good appetites, and in favour of a decent drink. Some of us hadn’t seen each other for several years, we spent time trying to pin down exactly when we last met, between 5-9 years. It didn’t matter, we carried on where we had left off during our last meal in exactly the same restaurant, quickly catching up with each other’s lives, families, jobs, partners, we ate and drank, and our carriages arrived a bit before midnight. Actually, I was parked around the corner.
Yesterday afternoon, during a half hour writing break, I watched a comedy drama on BBC Four, called A Civil Arrangement with the very agreeable and now silver-haired Alison Steadman. SPOILER ALERT. She played the mother of the bride. The bride was gay. The wedding a civil partnership. It was basically a monologue, though other characters dropped in and out silently. I know it wasn’t based in a big city, but in the provinces, and I know not everyone is okay with having a lesbian in their family, especially, as I am constantly reminded by people who live in the provinces, people who live outside London (actually there are quite a few inside London who have problems too). I did think it would have worked better on radio, then discovered it had been on radio, and possibly also in the theatre, and now it was getting its TV airing. I read one review prior to watching, actually the review made me want to watch, before that, I didn’t much care to see it. I knew it would be full of stereotypes and I knew I would be angry. I did laugh, some of it was very funny, and Alison Steadman always delivers, but my anger began when the soon-to-be daughter-in-law emerged in leathers and on a motorbike and continued where lesbians were portrayed as having no sense of humour. I can be very funny, quite often, really, I can. Then, after Alison Steadman and her brand new daughter-in-law have a snog at the wedding (the whole way through there are gradual suggestions that Alison Steadman’s character is falling in love with the wonderful Janis), they end up having an affair. It ended with Alison Steadman in leathers (and very lovely she was too) and her daughter-in-law waiting by her motorbike, no doubt to be taken off to Hebden Bridge for the weekend or Lesbos. I’ve never been to Lesbos. I have been to Hebden Bridge, but only en route to another location.
There were some lovely father/daughter, mother/daughter moments, especially when the father refused to go to the wedding, as he could not cope with it, and then, just as Alison Steadman had offered her daughter her arm, the father appeared all jolly and smiling and at peace with it all (see, miracles do happen), and the mother was left, alone. I loved that, it was true and sad and honest. What I didn’t love was the fact that yet again, lesbians were written and highlighted in a way anyone of ethnic origin was written about in the seventies, as stereotypes and usually the punchline to a weak joke.
I know I bang on about it, but banging creates noise and noise creates change, and those who remain silent, do nothing. If I wrote a Black or Asian character being depicted in the way lesbians usually are, I would (rightly) be reprimanded.
When will we start to see lesbians being written as women, not as ‘other’ to women? In case you hadn’t noticed, we are women, we do what other women do, we just happen to like other women in a way our other women friends don’t – actually I reckon quite a lot of them do, but would never admit it, or have, but would never say. When can we just be women, and not have our own TV series where we are other to the rest of the world, where we live in a ghetto, where we either have to be killed or kill ourselves or move away, or live with a dark secret, or marry a man? When will we just be? The inspirational David Simon (The Wire, Treme) writes women like me brilliantly, because he doesn’t make a big deal out of the fact that they are gay and the whole plot does not revolve around the fact that they are gay. As Stonewall’s apt tee shirt says – Some people are gay, get over it.
This comedy drama also made the need for equal marriage and equal civil partnership, more urgent, so that we can start to see weddings and civil ceremonies in comedies and dramas, with same-sex or opposite sex couples, and not separate one from the other. As long as we are kept separate we will stay separate. If you want to stay separate, that’s another matter, I don’t. So let’s stop reinforcing that all people who live in the suburbs or provinces can’t cope with anyone who is ‘other’, and give them a little more credit. They are not all right-wing homophobes.
My blogs are usually driven by some kind of anger with the world, and this one is no exception. I wasn’t sure how to start the blog, what to say exactly, but after dinner with my Uni friends last night, I realised that not one of us had used the word gay or lesbian. I was talked to and about just like the others, I was not made out to be different by my heterosexual women friends, because that’s not how they see me and not how I see myself, because I am a woman, just like them. The only difference for me was that I don’t have children, and the rest of them do. But that is another story and another blog and has nothing to do with me being gay.
For now, see me as a woman and a writer, who is very often quite funny.
Shelley Silas - writing about writing and other stuff 