Welcome to my blog page. I’m Charl van den Berg, 27 and from Sea Point, Cape Town. I’m starting up this blog for some self promotion as a finalist in for the Mr. Gay South Africa competition.
Yeah, yeah I know what you’re thinking these beauty competitions are so narcissistic and just brainless wonder parading around in skimpy underwear working hard for that sash and sceptre. LOL! Believe me I’m not here for the glory of being South Africa’s Number 1 Moffie. I actually have a message and a sense of social responsibility that I’d like to share and winning this title will provide me with a great opportunity to contribute positively towards the South African gay community and hopefully to South Africa in general.
Although I’m painfully aware that as South Africa we have a Constitution that is based on sexual equality, I think our biggest obstacle to this equality is not what we perceive to be so called heterosexual prejudice. Our biggest obstacle to true equality is our own internal prejudice within the gay community.
I work as a manager at a gay friendly chain of restaurants. So you get to meet a wide range of people from varying creeds, orientations and races and you are certainly afforded an opportunity to realise just how diverse not only our country is, but also more specifically, how diverse the 'greater gay community' is. So I’m very often engaged in conversations from the frivolous ‘about what she is wearing’ or ‘the latest hunk d’jour’ and some serious concerns from Julius Malema and Manto, to homophobia and HIV Aids. But the topic that always gets my attention is our own internal prejudices amongst ourselves.
It baffles me that even in a minority group such as the gay community; there can still be division and prejudice. Yes, I said it: although it’s never spoken about in polite conversation we are still divided amongst lines of class, top or bottom, butch or meisle-like and especially colour. How can we ever make a stand in the world if we can’t even stand together?
So this is why I’ve started this blog. To get the gay community speaking openly about these issues and confronting, as painful as it may be, their own prejudices. So I hereby invite you to share your own experiences comments or thoughts and be actively involved and not just take a back seat to issues and challenge our own prejudices that many of us seem to do.
Apart from keeping you all updated on how the run up to the finals for Mr. Gay South Africa is going I would like for you to share some of your own experiences from day to day. It would be great to see what you guys and girls get up to, the issues that concern YOU in your own life and just day to day human experience.
Be kind to yourself and each other
Charl
