So after last nights rather confusing post about the state of the nation I’ve had several enquiries asking to explain more. You are brave people. So let’s just look at a parallel, Las Vegas. I think it’s probably the most tacky and awful place on earth. It exists for one reason only and that is to empower people. But sadly it’s to empower people to gamble. So an entire city has been developed for the pure purpose of encouraging people to visit to lose money. I guess you could say the same thing about ‘Disney World’, but that’s when one giant corporation decides to do the same thing, and as that’s just capitalism then ‘that’s okay’. I’m not singling out the USA for being the criminal in this by any means, places like Dubai have developed areas purely for tourists that offer lush accommodation and vast shopping malls, providing of course you are not gay. 

The point is you are either developing a place or expectation to fulfil the needs of a person. But why is this any different to any other normal business transaction? A bakery sells bread as people want to eat it, a plumber mends a boiler as someone is freezing their arse off. So what’s the difference? The difference is no inherent person has ever had the need to buy a Mickey Mouse backpack. But isn’t this just classed as entertainment? Absolutely. This splits materialistic things between two extremes, necessities and desires. What does confuse matters though is where the boundary is placed, what personifies that Mickey Mouse backpack as being a ‘must have’? 

So we are now in a situation where we are both the purveyor and consumer of the exact same item, no longer in a materialistic sense, but from the point of view that if you you are the consumer of anything, there will always be someone out there to supply it, or corollary the case there will always be someone out there to exploit the potential that you want it. But that basis is no different to the analogy of if no one believed in God, does God then not exist? Or the more pessimistic view that if God existed and no one believed in him (her/it) would they be slightly pissed off? I digress. I’ll get back on track to my point. And we will reorientate to my current location, Gran Canaria, or more specifically Maspalomas and the Yumbo Centrum where you have almost the perfect dichotomy, love and hate in the same simmering cauldron of what’s architecturally just a shopping centre.

So here I am in a  mass concentration of gay / lesbian people in one location, who on the one hand are celebrating the fact that I ‘can be liberated’ and ironically on the other hand, pointing out the fact that I ‘can’t be liberated’ because I can only do it in the one location. There will sadly always be a stigma between the straight and gay communities, and in part it is brought on by myself. If I feel that I need a ‘special area / place’ to be who I am, then I am doing nothing to integrate with the same society I’m opposed to, if anything I’m just reinforcing stereotypes and the same problems will manifest forever more.

Sometimes I feel that rather than being part of the solution, I’m actually part of the problem.