Raymond Buys and the Flaws of Gay Media

A friend of mind sent me a link to this story about a kid named Raymond Buys who was beaten up in Manly Men Camp for being gay and eventually died. The article was something like this:

http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/gay-teens-starved-tortured-killed-camp-turn-them-%E2%80%98men%E2%80%99290413

I noticed with interest that this kid was from South Africa, and that he was Afrikaans, so I decided I’d do some research and read a few articles from the other side of the pond. After all, it’s not everyday that I have the opportunity to read about the murder of a gay teen in my home language.

So I read a few articles with disgust, just in awe at the sheer monstrosity. There’s a lot that wasn’t included in most of the English articles. The conditions were horrendous, and Raymond was hated for a lot more than being gay - he was apparently too dirty, too undisciplined, too worthless. His neck was cut when he was put in a - what to call it - large barrel to be washed outside because de Koker couldn’t stand him being inside; he was made to eat laundry detergent after spilling some, and had terrible gastrointestinal problems for a couple weeks; he was deprived of food and water for days on end. But I started wondering why none of the articles had ever mentioned that he was gay, or seemed gay, or was effeminate in any way at all.

So I did some better stalking.

The kid’s not effeminate. He was not gay. He’s from the Missouri of South Africa - knowing personally the culture he came from and having Facebook stalked his family a little to confirm my general understanding, it’s likely that such a thought had never once crossed his mind. He was doing poorly in school, smoked, had ADHD, wasn’t doing better on Ritalin. Various slightly more dubious accusations, like the fact that he apparently had intolerable body odor (because that’s totally abnormal in 15-year-old boys), was clumsy, and masturbated in public. Okay, so maybe a little socially awkward, but probably nothing abnormal. Raymond’s mother defends her son by saying she never called him a "problem child," but that he was a difficult teenager. But turns out he was never even called gay - another kid, Eric Calitz, who died after receiving severe brain injuries there, was told (by his sister’s report) that he “wasn’t a moffie and that [de Koker] would make a man out of him." The idea that he was gay was kind of made up by a South African-born, California-emigrated gender activist. The real story seems to be that as it became clear that he wasn’t succeeding on the traditional route, she wanted to put him in a camp that would allow him to be employed as a wildlife ranger. But the camp itself - well, Alex de Koker is a bit special.

Again, it doesn’t seem too unfamiliar to me. The entirety of (the male half of) Alex’s generation was mandatorily drafted into a few years of military service, during the last few years of the Apartheid era. (Mostly because of the war with Namibia.) My dad’s told stories of the ignorance and backward-mindedness of that culture, and how he was one of pitifully few educated people there - how a bunch of kids would go straight out of high school and get promoted to power-lusty positions over him, where they would be senselessly harsh for no apparent reason other than powerlust. I get that some of that is just the way the army works, but I’d feel better if I limited my condemnation to this particular time and place. When I situate Alex de Koker in this context, it seems completely obvious how he became such an idiot.

Edit: upon further investigation, yes, it turns out de Koker goes a bit further than even that - he’s part of the right-wing paramilitary white supremacist group called the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, or Afrikaner Resistance Movement. Is anyone surprised? K didn’t think so.

This man does not come from a culture where calling someone “moffie" means “Oh, you’re gay? That’s nice." Moffie is a dirty word - it’s not “gay," it’s “faggot." But calling someone “moffie" also doesn’t mean “God is damning you to hell for having butt sex, you dirty unholy son of a bitch," all Westboro Baptist style. It means “Oh, you can’t do something? That must mean you’re not invincible, which is what it means to be a man. And because you’re not performing to my completely unreasonable expectations (or, alternatively, because I’m not happy right now and want to feel superior to you), I’ll emasculate you by calling you a faggot."

…Although this crime is disgusting, it’s not unique, and I’m coming out of this research with decidedly different reflections than I thought I’d have going in.

Firstly: I should say that this kind of sexism is particularly abhorrent to me, and Manly Man culture makes me want to break something. This is still offensive from the light of gender criticism, even if it’s not really homophobia as much as the incidental use of a culturally-entrenched slur at an opportune moment for American gay rights activists to pick up on it and spread the news like wildfire.

So, secondly, what I take out of this is a hefty dose of cynicism. I would normally be the first one to hate on homophobia, but I’m starting to wonder if many American stories like this are cultural misunderstandings of a similar nature. I’m not saying that there haven’t been hordes and hordes of suicides and murders linked directly to sexual orientation and gender expression, but I can’t help but come out of this kind of research wondering if we sometimes get a little bit too excited - especially upon seeing a skinny kid in a hospital chair - to hear the next story about the terrible injustices of our opposition in this bitter culture war.