KAOS: November 2013

Suicide is the number one exit strategy for troubled gay teens. It was nearly mine. Looking back, I know what - and who - saved my life.

EARLIER THIS year, I saw a play called Gutted. Twice. And were it not for the burdensome intrusion of work, I'd have seen it a third time. Maybe more. This awesomely hypnotic piece of theatre (about four London Irish brothers facing up to the abuse wrought on them by their now deceased father) starred Louise Jameson, who in 1977 happened to play Leela in Doctor Who. A series of unlikely coincidences - about which I won't bore you - opened up the possibility of meeting Ms. Jameson in the flesh, which led me to think about what I'd actually say to this accomplished actress, for whom Doctor Who was just one small part of her career. Perhaps, "Ms Jameson, I'd just like you to know - it's not a big deal or anything - but you saved my life..."

Perth, Western Australia.

In 1977 I hadn't yet been born, but in 1990 I was a sensitive kid still in single digits, who suddenly found himself transposed from troubled Northern Ireland - with its bombs and barbed wire and rubber bullets - to the wonderful land of Oz. Sounds like a good swap, right? Well, not quite. It was Oz (sort of): somewhere on the bottom flank of planet Earth, arid Western Australia, seething with rabid Aussie nationalism and xenophobia, where the kids my age knew only of surfing, and heavy metal music. To white Australia - and it was white, relentlessly - I was the second most dirtiest thing imaginable: an immigrant. We grew here, you flew here, they said. An IRA terrorist had infiltrated the blond and blonde Aussies; it's a shame I was too naive to understand the significance of the invisible Aborigine, white Australia's most loathsome charge, or the meaning of the words "genocide" and "invasion".

The sense of desolation was crippling. The bullying - and it was bad, me against a whole country - was one thing, but having everything familiar, everything I loved ripped away was something else entirely. Suddenly, the town I grew up in, the family and friends I knew, the food I ate, and TV I watched, were gone, blotted out forever. Oz wasn't a yellow brick road and Munchkins, it was an unforgiving alien landscape under a baking hot sun, blighted by swarms of flies, punctuated by a creepy national anthem. It was like Nazi Germany and the Hitler Youth. Advance Australia fair! Foreigners out! Floundering in the unforgiving Aussie surf, this sensitive queer kid was about to go under.

ABC ident 1991.

Then, one day in the winter of 1990, Doctor Who popped up on the television. Doctor Who - on Australian TV! A miracle! Back home in the dying days of the '80s, I had been an avid fan of Doctor Who (it had also been, as I later learned, the dying days of Doctor Who). I had been gripped by adventures of cheetah people, of legendary knights in the present day, and homicidal clowns, where the estates of the National Trust were stalked by Cybermen, a benighted planet of women where you had to be happy or die, and a tower block in the future called Paradise Towers patrolled by murderous cleaning machines... It fired my imagination, and I loved it to bits, even though no one at school did. Doctor Who, at that time, was deeply out of fashion, and brainless American fare like The A Team was in.

Doctor Who in this barren wasteland of suburban Australia was the least likely thing on earth, but suddenly here it was on the ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) at 5.30 p.m., Monday to Thursday, a window to home, if not a way back. It was 1990, before streaming, before set-top boxes, before DVD. There was only VHS, which even then was expensive (for a 10-year-old, at any rate). The first serial was 1977's Image of the Fendahl. This time capsule of a story had me transfixed. It was, I'd later learn, also one of Louise Jameson's earliest shows.

The ABC screened several key seasons of late 1970s Doctor Who, and later most of the 1980s in a graveyard 4.30 a.m. slot. Yeah, I woke up early for those. But right at the beginning, it was Louise Jameson and Tom Baker who were there, when I was most lost, when I really had nothing and no one. Jameson's Leela - the outsider, the alien abroad - came along at exactly the right time. She was everything to that lost queer kid.

Looking back, I can see that those repeats saved me. You might say, "It's just a T.V. show", but it was a drowning man's life raft. When faced with extreme trauma, some of us adapt and conform (my brothers and sister did), and some of us find a temporary escape. Some of us seek out the ultimate exit strategy. Doctor Who was my escape, without it I'd have gone under, just one more gay kid for whom suicide was the only way out. Instead, I found a wonderful fantasy world I could retreat into, and right there on T.V., a character I could truly relate to, Louise Jameson's powerful outsider Leela.

Some twenty-five years later, I found myself watching this wonderful actress on stage in London, a world away from the horrors of Oz, in a play written and directed by the friend of the wonderful friend who finally rescued me from Oz (that's another story). I didn't have the nerve to say anything afterwards; I'm still damaged, still dented by all those ugly years in White Australia. "You haven't changed. Still finding menace in your own shadow," as the second Doctor says in The Five Doctors.

So, Louise Jameson, in the unlikely event you ever read this, I'd like to say thank you for being amazing, in 1977, in 1990, and again in 2013. When you were Leela, you saved this queer kid's life.

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PONDER THIS

> What is it like to be gay around the world?

||| The secret censorship stopping you seeing gay websites.

||| The twenty-five most bizarre questions bisexuals are asked.

||| Why I hate being a black man. "We espouse 'black is beautiful', but the true image of blackness is ugly. If we confront our self-hatred, maybe we'll have real pride."

||| The broken bargain for gay workers of colour.

||| Hard-working? If you pay me, I'll do a good job. That's the deal. "There's been a cynical smudging of the link between working and getting paid, and I won't exchange my labour solely for the approval of corporate entities."

||| Now it's time for feminism to tackle class as well as culture. "New women's rights groups could present a popular and serious challenge to more entrenched inequalities."

> No more evasion and prevarication – Britain's elite must be held to account. "How the powerful shield their activities from the public."

U.S. & CANADA NEWS

< Remembering the worst mass murder of gay people in U.S. history. "Forty years ago, dozens of people were trapped inside a New Orleans gay bar as it burned down. Now a new book, two films, an art installation, and a musical revisit the tragedy."

||| Denver leather bar Wrangler is transphobic, misogynistic, protesters allege.

||| Fondly remembering President Obama's days as a gay, cocaine-using hustler.

||| Why gay veterans still need our help.

||| Far right Christian and former military chaplain "Dr Chaps" Gordon Klingenschmitt says gay parents look on their adopted children with "lust" and want to recruit them into the "homosexual lifestyle".

> Joe Bell decided to walk from coast to coast in memory of his gay son Jadin, who hanged himself after a campaign of anti-gay bullying. But the grieving father was hit by a truck and killed one month ago, and individuals in his community decided to complete the walk and share his message.

||| Congress ends ban on HIV organ donation.

||| Watch a news report from Dallas on the problem of gay youth homelessness.

< LGBT Centers in New York City and Los Angeles begin major expansions.

||| Gay couples face a brave new financial world of marriage – and taxes.

||| Americans are more accepting of the Confederate flag than the rainbow pride flag.

> Elementary school teacher Mark Berndt pleads guilty to blindfolding and feeding students semen-laced cookies.

||| The awful details of the worst sexual harassment lawsuit ever.

||| I thought the U.S. was the land of gold. Now I see it as rude and disrespectful.

||| How the low-as-you-can-go wage model is working out for Americans.

U.K. NEWS

||| Gay tourism expected to be worth more than $US200 billion in 2014.

||| Ofsted inspectors are finally cracking down on schools that fail to tackle anti-gay bullying.

||| What's the delay in the implementation of marriage equality? The government is waiting for Scotland to "catch up", apparently.

< What does Prime Minister Cameron believe in? His own ministers aren't sure.

EUROPE NEWS

||| The rise of far right parties across Europe is a chilling echo of the 1930s. "Having played down their fascist sympathies they're re-emerging now after a PR facelift. Time is running out to counter them."

> POLAND: Far right demonstrators torch gay equality rainbow in Warsaw public square.

< RUSSIA: Last week (THE KAOS THEORY Issue 164) we heard about a gay South African student who was kidnapped by a neo-Nazi gang and tortured. In fact, he was from Swaziland, and has returned home, understandably traumatised.

||| RUSSIA: Maxim Martsinkevich, the anti-gay neo-Nazi leader of the group Occupy Pedophilia, has fled Russia to escape extremism charges.

> RUSSIA: Officials bugged a meeting convened by gay activists (and four major international human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch).

< RUSSIA: Shots fired in gay Moscow nightclub Central Station.

||| RUSSIA: Gays are to blame for falling meteorites, according to T.V. host Arkady Mamontov.

||| RUSSIA: Alexander Suturin, chief editor of a Khabarovsk newspaper, arrested for printing "being gay is normal".

||| ITALY: Why even atheists should be praying for Pope Francis. "Francis could replace Obama as the pin-up on every liberal and leftist wall. He is now the world's clearest voice for change."

||| SPAIN: Madrid chosen to host World Pride International celebrations in 2017.

> LUXEMBOURG: Prime Minister Xavier Bettel names Socialist leader Etienne Schneider (right) as his Deputy Prime Minister, making the country the world's first with a gay leader and deputy leader.

LATIN AMERICA NEWS

||| COLOMBIA: Javier Suárez Pascagaza, the director of the Husband and Wife Foundation and a leading opponent of marriage equality, has been outed as a gay man.

< ARGENTINA: 150,000 turn out for the 22nd Buenos Aires Gay Pride Parade. In pictures.

||| CUBA: "Welcoming locals" attracting the pink dollar to the once forbidden island.

||| JAMAICA: Police continue harassing homeless gay youths living in the sewers and gullies of New Kingston.

||| JAMAICA: The Constitutional Court rules Jamaican TV channels can refuse to screen gay equality public service announcement. Lawyer and Jamaican activist Maurice Tomlinson starred in the PSA, and brought the law suit against the stations.

> Maurice Tomlinson challenges anti-gay laws of Trinidad and Tobago, and Belize.

AFRICA NEWS

< UGANDA: Activists protest arrest of Samuel K Ganafa, director of Spectrum Uganda Initiatives, and Board Chairperson of Sexual Minorities Uganda.

> UGANDA: Gay Briton and Ugandan partner face jail over private sex images on stolen laptop.

||| ZAMBIA: Judge refuses to grant bail to Phillip Mubiana and James Mwape, who have languished for six months without a conviction on charges of homosexual activity.

||| ZAMBIA: Treat gays like every other citizen, pleads human rights activist Juliet Mphande in new video.

ASIA NEWS

||| SOUTH KOREA: The Supreme Court overturns adults-only rating for gay film Just Friends?

||| VIETNAM: Gay couples are now permitted to organise weddings and live together - although same sex marriages still won't be legally recognised.

> SRI LANKA: London protest against anti-gay hate in the Commonwealth as leaders meet in Colombo. Homosexuality is illegal in 41 out of 53 Commonwealth countries. In pictures.

||| PHILIPPINES: The real story of "looting" after a disaster like typhoon Haiyan.

< HONG KONG: Thousands cheer on the 2013 Hong Kong Pride Parade. In pictures.

||| NEW ZEALAND: Female teacher suggests threesome with students, a gay male couple.

||| AUSTRALIA: MP Alex Greenwich challenges private schools exemption from provisions that make it unlawful to discriminate against a student on the basis of homosexuality or transgender grounds.

MIDDLE EAST NEWS

||| ISRAEL: No gays in the city of Beit Shemesh, claims its mayor.

> SYRIA: How jihadists are blackmailing, torturing, and killing gay Syrians.

||| EGYPT: Police arrest ten people on homosexuality-related charges in the western Cairo suburb known as 6th of October City.

||| UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: Dubai fireman faces trial for "gay" handshake described as "perverted" and "insulting".

PLANET EARTH

< Typhoon Haiyan: there is worse to come. The first disaster to kill more than a million people could happen within our lifetimes. Left, a father carries the body of his daughter in Tacloban, 10th November 2013.

||| 3.5 billion-year-old fossil found in Australia is the "oldest ever complete example of life on Earth".

> New life found on plastic waste gives rise to the "plastisphere".

< If you've ever wondered what a mindfuck looks like, now you know.

||| Meet Ming, the oldest known living animal in the world at 507-years-old - until boffins killed it.

||| The rare saola, one of the most threatened mammals on the planet, has been photographed in Vietnam for the first time in fifteen years.

> Almost as rare as the saola is Argentina's pink fairy armadillo, and its flat butt plate.

THE BIG PICTURE: A bull elephant charges a hippo and her calf.

||| Domestic dogs are 10,000 years older than scientists thought.

< This loyal puppy stayed by his dead sister's side.

BODY, MIND & SOUL

||| Is AIDS funny?

||| A vapour known as mushroom alcohol found in damp buildings may trigger Parkinson's disease.

||| Researchers discover immune system's "alarm" for warning of recurring cancer. And a tumour, it turns out, can be made up of many separate cancers needing different treatments.

> Cheer up - seriously, cheer up! Depression makes us biologically age "by several years".

||| Alcohol without the hangover? It's closer than you think.

||| Sociable people have "bigger" brains.

||| Despite what you've been told, you aren't 'left-brained' or 'right-brained'. "The brain is more complex than corporate team-building exercises suggest, but the myth is unlikely to die anytime soon."

< The science behind why break-ups suck (and what you can do about it).

||| Why are babies scared of plants?

||| How many people born in the 1800s are still alive?

||| What will jail terms be like when humans can live for centuries?

INSIDE THE SPACESHIP

||| Why does Apple's dictionary say "gay" means "foolish" or "stupid"?

||| How "the internet of things" and connected life devices will change everything about the global consumer economy.

||| How Facebook ranks your friends.

> Myspace lays off "entire departments" of staff.

||| Google patenting an electronic "throat tattoo".

||| Hacking the connected home: when your house watches you.

||| Watch where you write. If you house your creative work on a platform you don't own, you could be in for disappointment.

< How QWERTY will save the PC.

||| How long your hard drive is likely to last.

ART & DESIGN

> Looking back at the art of Ralph Chubb.

< More pictures from Bent-Con — the gay-focused convention for fans of comic-books, gaming, sci-fi, fantasy, and horror.

||| Check out the new design concept for the final section of New York's High Line park:

WORD!

> Talking to Thomas Glave ("perhaps the most respected gay male Caribbean author") about his new collection of essays, Among the Bloodpeople: Politics and Flesh.

< Gore Vidal on James Baldwin: "A black writer who then turns out to be a queen and also a preacher of the Lord; it was one of the reasons he was so often hysterical and very often made no sense at all, because he was living too many contradictions."

> Author John R. Gordon's writer's diary: because the spirit is in the flesh.

||| If the rumours about Gore Vidal are true, what does this mean for his work? "Allegations of paedophilia threaten to destroy the late writer's reputation. If true, should his books be pulped, or does the Wagner defence apply?"

||| PD James's ten tips for writing novels.

< Celebrate Bent-Con with seven gay graphic novels.

PERFORMANCE

> Protest planned for The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, the "story of Adam and Steve, who leave the Garden of Eden to encounter the Earth's first inhabitants, a pair of lesbians named Jane and Mabel".

||| Is stage nudity becoming so frequent it might be needful in future to highlight programmes in which some performers may appear wearing clothes?

AT THE MOVIES

> There's less than two weeks to go to fund Elegance Bratton's film Pier Kids: The Life, a documentary about the homeless gay and transgender youth who call the Christopher Street Pier home. Make a difference, pledge.

< Here's the UK poster for Kill Your Darlings.

||| James Franco blasts Michael Fassbender character in Shame and movie's depiction of gay sex. "That scene where he's at his lowest point and wants to fuck and goes into a gay club, and it's depicted like the seventh level of hell. I mean, it goes back to the horrible representations of gays in the '70s, where the gay club is meant to signify everything dark and depraved. Then the guy gets a minor blowjob, from, Oh no, a man! The horror!"

||| The gay film festival cinema that funded anti-gay causes.

||| How violence and a lack of diversity leaves gay families lacking for choices at the movies.

||| Who killed the spoof movie?

> Alec Baldwin trots out gay hairdresser to try and prove he's no homophobe.

||| Enough of Alec Baldwin, he doesn't get a free pass.

||| Watch Knowing, a new film about HIV and dating.

< Film review: Snails in the Rain "...treads ground ever more familiar in LGBT cinema, it does so from an intriguing starting point, even as it avoids dealing with any religious or cultural issues that might seem integral to the setting."

||| Ten bizarre movie tropes that were totally normal in the '80s.

> DVD review: Monster Pies. "A sweet, moving gay teen tale."

||| DVD review: A Magnificent Haunting. "An affable, warm Italian comedy, which is filled with a lot of ideas but not so much follow-through."

||| Trailers: Yves Saint Laurent, a "biopic about the late fashion designer which chronicles the rise of his career and his longtime love affair with partner Pierre Bergé"; and Snails in the Rain.

T.V.

||| The difference between "binge watchers" and "couch potatoes".

||| Kenyan TV show Usoni flips the script on immigration stories, imagining European refugees fleeing to Africa in 2062.

> Talking to Jonathan Groff about HBO's new gay drama series Looking. "What we're trying to display is a reality of gay sex as opposed to the salaciousness of gay sex."

||| But why are some people dismissing Looking as the gay Girls before it even premieres?

||| The 3 Bits web series creators interviewed by police due to "coke snorting off a baby" scene.

< The legacy of Rickie Vasquez, a "queer person of color on primetime network TV played by an out actor (Wilson Cruz) in 1994".

> Ten classic T.V. kids gay parents would love to call their own. Left, Ugly Betty's Justin Suarez (Mark Indelicato).

||| Why Teen Wolf is an orientation-blind utopia.

< 30 Rock actor Maulik Pancholy comes out.

||| What Wentworth Miller would say to his 15-year-old self after his suicide attempt.

> Taye Diggs gets naked in the latest episode of New Girl.

||| Felix Dexter was the real McCoy, but our comedians have been blacked out of TV. "The BBC pays tribute to this great talent – but black comedy shows, in which he made his name, have been wiped off the schedules."

||| HBO developing Curb Your Enthusiasm-style comedy with Black Hollywood as the backdrop.

< Just in time for Doctor Who's fiftieth anniversary, the son of the man who came up with the idea of the TARDIS police box disguise is challenging BBC over breach of copyright. Stef Coburn wants the BBC to stop using the police box, or pay for every appearance it makes.

||| David Tennant tops the poll for the nation's favourite Doctor, with incumbent Matt Smith managing a paltry fifteen percent of the vote.

> Sixth Doctor Colin Baker says that former stars of Doctor Who were "deemed unworthy of inclusion" in the show's 50th special.

||| Review: An Adventure in Space and Time, the Doctor Who origins drama, a "love letter to the child in all of us".

||| Here's some new pictures from An Adventure in Space and Time, and the trailer, plus The Night of the Doctor, a new mini episode starring eighth Doctor Paul McGann.

||| Take an interactive tour of the TARDIS.

||| Angela Lansbury is displeased with Murder, She Wrote reboot.

< Will Horton and Sonny Kiriakis - Days of Our Lives' gay couple - are getting married.

> Gays of our lives: All the latest gay soap developments from around the world, from Anthony D. Langford. Left, German soap Among Us.

||| Watch a trailer of HBO's new gay drama series Looking; and one for Chozen, FX's new animated gay series.

BEATS, RHYMES AND LIFE

||| Home transcribing is killing music! (Apparently.)

||| Ten things you didn't know about '90s hip-hop.

< Here's a sizzling new shot of gay rap duo Freaky Boiz.

||| Listen to Zebra Katz - Blk Wiccan. Video.

> Listen to Heartbreaker, from Kele Okereke's new four-song EP Heartbreakers.

< Tyler the Creator says you can chose not to be offended by the word "faggot".

||| X Factor winner James Arthur (I know - who?) brands rapper Mickey Worthless a "fucking queer".

||| Why must we accept the casual racism in pop videos? "Everyone's getting very moral about Miley Cyrus and misogyny in music videos but what about the race issue?"

||| After the demise of Choice FM, is it back to pirate radio for black Britons? "We set up the station to fill a cultural void. Rebranding it as Capital Xtra is a betrayal that takes us back to the 1980s."

||| Is there no end to the morbid business of pop memorabilia? "Once you've bought John Lennon's school detention records or Eminem's derelict house, where do you go from there?"

||| Chris Brown is out of rehab.

> Album review: Tinie Tempah – Demonstration. "The album succeeds in combining facile lyrical nods to your (stereo)typical rap fare (women, money, bling) with more profound songwriting."

||| Videos: Blake McIver (former child star of '90s sitcom Full House turned gay go-go boy) Wish I Didn't Need You; and Nothing Compares 2 U, Rogue Marbie Scott style.

SEX

< The hottest men of 2013 - in mugshots.

> Swimwear designer Matthew Zink launches the first Charlie 2014 Fan Calendar.

||| Talking to Race Cooper.

||| Talking to Jordano Santoro.

||| Talking to Sean Xavier.

||| Brazilian couple Diego Lauzen and Wagner Vittoria bed Rogan Richards. It's one of the best scenes I've seen in a long time. Some behind-the-scenes shots here.

< kaos krush Marco Rubi looking cute as ever filming for MEN.com.

> So this is what twenty-four Bel Ami boys warming up for an orgy looks like.

ARENA

> Barcelona's gay swim team strips down for HIV.

< Out baller Jason Collins counts his blessings, despite not having an NBA team.

||| Baller Anthony Davis naked, spanked in locker-room in Vine clip.

> LA Galaxy player Robbie Rogers is dating Arrow creator Greg Berlanti.

AND WHILST YOU'RE

THINKING ABOUT

THAT, THINK

ABOUT THIS

< Inside a nuclear fallout shelter sealed since 1961.

> Inside New York state's abandoned Kings Park Psychiatric Center.

||| What would happen if oxygen disappeared for five seconds?

||| What of all the vanished foods we can never taste again?

||| Americans – why do you keep refrigerating your eggs?

||| The top ten things you never have to pay full price for.

||| Would you let someone sleep on your shoulder on the subway? Charidy decided to find out:

||| And finally, Rogue "Marbie" Scott's coming out story; Walter wonders if Tyler Perry is a self-hating gay; Justin takes a home HIV test; and Andrew gets mail.