Straight Jacket by Matthew Todd

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Having heard Matthew Todd talk on the theme of Gay Shame at an LGBT+ History Month event I got this book out the library.

It is a raw book, in which Matthew talks about his own struggles with mental health and shares lots of example of other gay men, including a tragic number of those that have taken their own lives. It is therefore a book that comes with a massive trigger warning. I found that I could only read it in small doses as the issues were so close to home.

He focuses on issues around gay men, as that is his lived experience – there is much that would be common to lesbians, bi, and trans experience but we also should not confuse LGBT+ solidarity with a homogenising of particular pinch points that those with different identities within that experience.

One of the key insights he brings is that we spend so much time on the defensive fighting old stereotypes about being gay being inherently disordered that we can’t admit that there is a massive mental health issue going on. The cause is not homosexuality but society’s homophobia (the legacy of past, but also the current reality). “for the gay community this subject has been taboo because it seems to play to a homophobic agenda and, more significantly, because it might collapse our house of cards. Year ago, when … asked by our drunken boss if we were ‘really happy being gay’, we could barely spit the words out quickly enough to reassure him how happy we were...” (p28)

Even those of us who grew up in families that are affirming of who we are will still have been impacted by wider society “I did not have magical earplugs. I was listening and reading, as were all my generation.” (p42) we “have had to develop some kind of shield against prejudice, an understanding that some people are stupid… though many of us move to hubs where it is safer, we accept that homophobia is always a possibility.” (p43)

As we celebrate the progress that has been made within the UK we can overlook how far from equality we still remain – as Matthew puts it “I like to think that those men and women who lived before 1967, when male homosexuality was a crime, would be overwhelmed by the progress we’ve made. But I’m certain they’d want us to live our lives to their greatest potential and not throw away what they could never dream of: the opportunity to like and love not only each other but, ultimately, ourselves.” (p14)

We also have to acknowledge that the problem is not just straight people – Matthew is pretty clear about his dislike of Grindr as only manifestation of how cruel gay men can be to people other, of the toxicity of body image, and racism. In a week when there have been resignations around London Pride this is in really sharp relief – we have to get to a point where we can acknowledge that gay people are not prefect, that we have no superiority, but the failures of individual gay people, even the failures of lots on individual gay people, does not make being gay a problem.

The second half of the book is a self-help guide, working through the strategies for different addictions some of which can become repetitive, but it is justified by the importance and value of putting that help out there for those in need of it.