But a careful reader will acknowledge how these cultural forms have multi-varying impacts.
Madonna, The Wizard of Oz his examples) reify normativity, reinscribing shame through a desire to belong. Indeed, some of these materials and artists (i.e. I fear Todd's damnation of queer art and literature (materials he describes as 'escapism’-art and literature that focalises shame, oppression and hurt) fails to acknowledge what these materials accomplish. Of course, any keen reader will notice the irony of this good gay/bad gay future. Todd seeks to address this socialisation of the 'bad homosexual' by introducing effective 'age appropriate' relationship education in secondary schools and emphasising more 'realistic' representations of gay lives in the gay and mass media.
His vision for the future is one without the reliance upon cultures of shame, which, in his thinking, have accultured all gay men. There is some merit in Todd's call for increasing access to mental and emotional healthcare support better education about sexual health, STIs and HIV and gay relationships and the larger vision to create community by way of an LGBT centre in the heart of Soho where alcohol and drugs are not the ostensible enemy that perpetuate our internalised homophobia and shame. I push against otherwise 'critical acclaim' to note that while thirty pages of the book provide important resources for sobering up and 'finding your balance', this sort of self-help book for gay men has been elsewhere provided - and with greater nuance.
(Never mind that the 'authentic queer self' colludes with his admittedly gay-male agenda.) His diluted psychopathology merely restates thirty years of complex and engaging scholarship on gay and lesbian psychology, updating this material, as it were, for a contemporary and public audience. His reliance upon anecdotes is powerful and engenders meaningful images of ‘authentic queer’ lives, an ontological hinge upon which his psychological thinking wavers. Todd utilises a common appeal to psychoanalysis, admitting he is not a trained practitioner and prescribing all the same. Far from a groundbreaking narrative, Matthew Todd's Straight Jacket (2016) is just that: exceptional in accounts of journalism, but the material is far from novel.
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