We are all (f)aboriginal

I had an aha moment this morning and, in the nature of blogging, I am going to share it with lucky old you. I found this quirky little book by Germaine Greer called “Whitefella Jump Up – The Shortest Way to Nationhood”. Now we all know that Germaine is an iconoclast of note and this book is no exception. It’s a pithy and pungent exploration of the “aboriginal problem” faced by Australia as it grapples with issues of how aboriginal people have been treated in Australia and what is to be done with the slow disintegration and displacement of many aboriginal communities.

I haven’t finished the book, by the way, so bear with me if I take some of it out of context. But one big idea has really gripped me and I’m going to run with it. Greer’s idea is that the problem of aboriginality can be solved if we all declare ourselves to be aboriginal: “Defining the Aborigine as irrevocably Other has resulted in the creation of non-viable pockets of Aboriginality, human zoos or living museums, in which Aboriginals are considered to be living ‘unchanged’”.

And quoting Jeremy Beckett in “Past and Present: The Construction of Aboriginality” when he says, “Aboriginality is a cultural construction. It shares this quality with all other nationalisms, including the Australian, being an example of what Ben Anderson has called the ‘imagined community’”, she makes the point that all forms of identity (based for example on ethnicity, race and nationalism) are “products of the human imagination”.
Well congratulations if you have waded through these sticky ideas so far! I am getting to my point, trust me. My point is that we – and by we I mean the human race – are obsessed with difference and we hold onto those things that define us as separate, at the cost of celebrating what we have in common. I feel, sometimes, that my identity as a gay man is simply a product of my imagination and that when I talk of the gay “community” I am indulging in a fantasy. And in the process, am I, in my apartheid-ness, denying what I share with straight people, losing something in the process?

So as Greer asks us all to think of ourselves as aboriginal, what if all gay people said “I am straight”? And if straight people were to say “I am gay”? In fact, this could go even further and we could all say “I am black, I am white, I am South African, I am Japanese, I am disabled, I am able bodied, I am poor, I am rich, I am foreign, I am local.”

There is something of the Buddhist concept of interconnectedness in this, I grant you, but could it not be a liberating and mind altering to play this game? Surely it’s only the limits of my imagination that stop me from seeing the common essence in all of us? And perhaps in the process I would stop being so precious about my own gay identity which I have asserted and trumpeted in these columns over the last year. What if we could allow ourselves, in our imaginations, to see the world through the eyes of the “Other”? Are straight people really so odd that I feel a need to define myself through things that are non-straight?

My love of camp, drag, ballet, gossip, tragic heroines, period dramas and other men doesn’t stop me from also loving sport, fast cars, strong women, politics, an amazing bush hike and a road trip with my brothers. Or stop me from wanting love, a relationship, and maybe marriage and children.

Human DNA is extraordinarily complex. While we’re all unique, twins and clones apart, we share amazing commonality in our basic genetics. So much so that if we trace our lineages we all pretty much go back to the same core. Our imaginations have created our separateness and they can un-create it. So, in the spirit of (f)aboriginality I challenge you to walk out of your human zoo or living museum and declare “I am you”, “you are me” and, “we are all fabulous”. Just do it quietly at first – a public declaration might just get you some strange looks!