In Retrospect

[March 31, 2014]*

One of the really interesting things about London was, for me, some of the social situations and the implications of how they played out. This sounds like a really fancy way of saying that I found everyday interactions curious, but I'm an English major; I like words; go with it.

For example, strolling around SoHo displayed some interesting things.

• "Adult bookstores" in America are simply "sex shops" in SoHo, and they aren't shy about what they contain. It's an established fact that humans are sexual creatures, and while conservative America (which is, of course, that with which I am familiar) hides it from themselves and everybody else, London seemed willing to embrace it. In the very public display window of one store were a pair of, well, let's be frank here: assless underpants. Placed on the groin (is there a word for a bust that's the opposite end of a torso...?) of a male-oriented mannequin, these were out in the open amidst a collection of vibrators, lingerie and other sex toys. The stores are unabashedly honest and open while remaining entirely serious about age restrictions.
  Why is this interesting?
  Because it says that although they are perhaps more open about sexuality and the fact that everybody loves a good orgasm, it's still kind of a sign that a person is judged on/by their sexuality. This is a really abstract concept which is somewhat difficult to explain coherently, but the very notion that they are open about it means that it's much more difficult to be unobtrusive about acquiring objects. The entrances are out in the open, so any passersby know precisely where you're going and what for. The window displays may lead people to think that the store specializes in a particular manner--or the neighborhood in which the store is located can cause the same kind of viewer extrapolation which leads to even a subconscious form of judgment upon the viewed individual(s).
• The gay bars were also relatively ostentatious. A discussion with my parents actually prompts me to make a particular distinction: the gay bars in question were designated as gay bars, not just bars which were 'taken over' (in a manner of speaking) by persons of the gay-persuasion who just happened to like the location. The one seemed to be called G-A-Y, which I'm guessing because it was plastered across the entire front of the building.
  Even though these were in SoHo, which is kind of a portion of the counter-culture scene, there were a lot of people who were in the area for dinner, or dessert, or whatever reason they happened to be there for, and this yields a lot of casual 'interaction' between hetero/cisgender** people and non-hetero people.
  Do you know what happened? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Even the overtly flamboyant were ignored as just more people on the sidewalk or in the club.  Nobody really seemed to care. There were no unhappy glances, no snide comments, no tension--nothing. Surprising? Meh; not really.

Walking around London outside of SoHo during the rest of the week was also interesting just purely for the sake of people watching. There were non-hetero couples all over the place, and some were more obvious than others. The very first day we were there, a gay couple stood in the corner of the train beside our group and it seemed like I was the only person who even noticed them. On the sidewalk one day, a couple sort of paused to kiss, and the guy behind them really only seemed annoyed because he had to move around them and they were in the way. In Regents Park, there were a couple of transvestites sitting on a bench, and a man was taking pictures of them--probably because of how absolutely fabulous they looked (and I'm not being facetious; they were seriously fabulous). But the guy was clearly a tourist. There were parents playing with their kids about fifty yards behind them and people strolling on the sidewalk and everybody did their thing around them and nobody made a fuss.

While all of this seems like they've fully incorporated their non-traditional citizens into the fold, there was a sign on a bus that made a comment to the effect of "we've still got progress to make" (a sign which I rather tried to get a picture of but never saw again after that first sighting) which tells me that the population is aware of remaining ostracism, oppression, what have you. This isn't surprising to me either, because in a place with a population as diverse as London's, you will never have 100% agreement on anything. People are too diverse, have backgrounds which are too different and belief sets which are too mutually exclusive in order to come to full agreement on a great many things, and gender/sexuality fluidity is certainly a big one. There will always be a religious population clinging to the Old Testament verses declaring homosexuality a sin; there will always be people uncomfortable with the idea for whatever reason they've determined. And whether or not that's bad is arbitrary because, like snow in North Dakota, it's inevitable. I don't know of a single issue that does not face opposition somewhere, from someone/group for some reason. 

However, I do really think that Britain is ahead of the United States on this front purely for coming to a point where (A) they've made legal allotments for transgendered people making discrimination against them illegal and (B) their civil partnership for non-traditional unions are legally identical to marriages.

*I realized tonight that although I'd written this post, it was still just a draft in my post list. So this is now backdated.
**persons whose experiences line up with the gender into which they were born. i.e. girls who are comfortable identifying with and being female.