Sometime in September 2022, the band The 1975 sat down over Zoom with its agents, lawyers, and several Malaysian gay activists to discuss gay rights in their country. The band was planning to stage a concert in Kuala Lumpur in the following summer and was excited about visiting Malaysia.
But lead singer Matty Healy had concerns.
Clad in a blue hoodie, his salt and pepper hair sticking up every which way in its characteristic rumpled fashion, Healy rubbed the stubble on his chin and looked at the screen in front of him, his deep brown eyes warily scanning faces as he searched for the right words. What he had to say was, he knew, exceedingly delicate, and could even potentially put the lives of the activists at risk. A close friend had heard about the band’s planned trip and raised the matter of gay rights in Malaysia—where sodomy is a crime, and homosexuality can be punished by death. How was The 1975 to reconcile its presence in such an environment with its sensitivity towards LGBTQ issues? Could the band reach out to local queer activists and express public solidarity with them? Might that only make things worse? Should the band actually consider cancelling…
Oh, wait, never mind.
None of this happened.
Here’s what did happen. The 1975 showed up in Kuala Lumpur and Matty Healy went on stage in a drunken rant, “I feel bad for you guys. I made a mistake. When we were booking shows, I was not looking into… I do not see the point of inviting The 1975 to a country and then telling us who we can have sex with.” He then kissed bass player Ross MacDonald. Their set was cut short soon afterwards, according to The Mary Sue. The band left the stage and headed out of the country.
Unknown to them, chaos ensued soon after. Riveted by their hero’s bravery, thousands of gay Malaysians looked at each other and then, as if of one mind and accord, swarmed the now empty stage and began chanting Healy’s name. Soon, a Pride flag, the international symbol of hope for LGBTQ people everywhere, made an appearance, and then another one popped up in the crowds, and then another and then another…Eventually, the venue was filled to bursting as attendees texted their friends. Next, tens of thousands of queer people and their allies, filled with the courage of Healy and The 1975, swarmed government buildings and ended the oppressive laws that had…
Oh, wait, never mind.
That never happened, either.
Here’s what did happen. Matty Healy and his bandmates made it out of Malaysia, back to their comfortable homes. More likely than not, they flew out in a private plane where they lolled around on plush seats, watching and rewatching footage of the scandalous event on their phones, laughing all the while. Meanwhile, back in Kuala Lumpur, authorities cancelled the entire concert series, leaving fans deprived of the music for which they had shelled out their money. Healy’s public act empowered no one but it did focus more attention on gay lives and issues and it took activists by shock and surprise. As many Malaysian gays have since pointed out, Healy’s act was little more than a self-serving stunt and could even make matters worse if lawmakers—already mired in a deeply contentious election where conservatives are eager to make their case—decided to ramp up opposition to LGBT rights in order to raise their profiles.
Healy has a history of such actions (and of racism in general): in 2019, he kissed a male fan in Dubai. Such public expressions of homosexuality are punishable by imprisonment in the United Arab Emirates: to date, no one has reported on whether or not the fan was sought out and punished by authorities in one of the most surveilled countries in the world. There’s no record of Healy having inquired into his condition afterwards. What the Dubai incident does tell us is that Healy and his band aren’t unaware that many of the countries they go to may have anti-queer laws on the books— in which case, the far more ethical thing to do is to simply not go at all and make public statements explaining why. But actually flying into a country and creating a situation that could easily turn physically and politically volatile in a second is nothing less than an irresponsible act that actually, literally puts actual, literal lives in danger. Healy and his bandmates might see themselves as invulnerable, as white men of their ilk are bound to do, but there’s no excuse for this behaviour. It’s also clear, from their history, that Healy’s line about not knowing about Malaysia’s laws about homosexuality is just bullshit.
Unsurprisingly, Healy is being hailed as a hero by many white gays, chief among them Peter Tatchell whose decades of white saviourism have helped create the Peter Tatchell Industrial Complex. His bio states that’s he’s director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation and the subject of the Netflix documentary, Hating Peter Tatchell. As far as I can tell, the movie is about him as a beloved gay icon hated by big, mean conservatives. But Tatchell has long been criticised, across several continents, for his one-man crusades against homophobia that do little more than elevate his reputation as White Man Who Will Save Gays All Over the World. Tatchell is to gays everywhere what Nicholas Kristof is to “trafficked” women, parachuting into situations where he has not been invited, eager to burnish his reputation as Saviour (see below for further reading on his activism). In his writings, he is relentlessly pompous and twists words to hide the truth. His recent op-ed in the Guardian, for instance, states, “In my view, it was honourable for Healy to admit that it was a ‘mistake’ to perform in Malaysia. When booking the gig, he was not aware of the country’s homophobic laws. By speaking out, he was seeking to atone for the band’s de facto collusion with an anti-LGBTQ+ regime. Surely that’s commendable?”
Here, note that he begins with “in my view” —it’s enough for us, apparently, that this is what the Right Honourable Peter Tatchell thinks, with no evidence that he either spoke to Healy or to any actual activists on the ground. Despite Tatchell’s self-declared status as Expert in All International Gay Matters, he doesn’t offer us a single name, or a single sentence that even begins with, say, “I spoke to my long-time Malaysian counterpart X.” Tatchell also claims that Healy was unaware of Malaysian laws concerning homosexuality as if the singer, who has been touring for over twenty years and, who, let us recall, once pulled the exact same stunt in Dubai, is just a sweet innocent lad who had no idea what the country was like for queers.
I, a visibly brown, queer woman whose bio prominently features the words “anarchist,” “queer,” and “socialist” and whose very hair screams, Arrest this bitch, to every misogynistic customs officer in the world, won’t even fly over Dubai, for fear of the plane landing there to refuel. But, hey, white men like Healy can, of course, go and do anything anywhere in the world, assured that other white men like Tatchell will be sure to slide in and wipe up the shit they leave behind.
Make no mistake: the Healy incident and the responses to it and to him are emblematic of the discourse of celebrity and the economy of eyeballs that pervades public life these days. The New Yorker, for instance, ran a profile on him written by none other than Jia Tolentino because, why not? When a man has become infamous for making racist comments about a woman of colour, Ice Spice—whom he mocked by imitating Chinese, Inuit, and Hawaiian accents—it is of course logical to send your most well known woman of colour writer to interview him because, media event. Tatchell is part of this economy of attention: his op-ed is written with a calm assurance that says, “I know exactly what Matty is going through” even as he appears to have no actual connection to Healy —although, who knows, White Saviour Men may well be linked to each other through invisible Tubes of Influence that the rest of us just can’t see, like aliens communicating to each other via telepathy.
Both Healy and Tatchell are loved by white liberals and even many leftists who can’t bear to think of Muslims and other such marginalised groups unless they’re first rendered as sad, pitiable creatures, in need of “our” help. Did The Guardian, these days mostly a blog bristling with op-eds, have to publish Tatchell’s vapid yet noxious words without any kind of accompanying rebuttal? Of course not. But where’s the fun and the attention to a sound counter argument presented by a person of colour who might actually demolish the politics of White Saviorism?
If Healy and The 1975 really wanted to, they could have consulted with local gay activists in Kuala Lumpur and asked, simply, “How can we work with you? Would it make sense for us to declare a boycott and call for support of your work or is there anything else we can do?” The answer might well have been, “Please, just shut up and maybe send us money to support our work.” I very much doubt that anyone would have responded with, “Well, here’s an idea: show up anyway, create a media spectacle, and hop back on your plane and get out.”
Let’s be clear: organising around queer issues is a messy, unpredictable matter. Nearly every major human rights organisation, including the ubiquitous Human Rights Watch, is troublingly imperialistic and mostly exists to keep itself in existence. As for local groups, there’s very little guarantee that those claiming to work on the ground aren’t also money-grubbing enterprises that exist solely to generate incomes for elites. But: there are also organisations sincerely trying to do the work and there are activists putting their lives on the line on a daily basis. The reality is somewhere in between all of this, and none of us sitting at home can ever claim full knowledge about whom to trust.
But here’s what we know for sure: a kiss and run strategy helps no one, and might even put many more lives in danger. It’s time to stop fetishising White Saviours like Matty Healy and Peter Tatchell. Let them rot, like bitter brown leaves on the vine of Imperialism.
Peter Tatchell has a long, dark history that bears scrutiny. For more see these sources:
“Out of Place, Out of Print: On the Censorship of the First Queerness/Raciality Collection in Britain,” by Johanna Rothe.
You can find a summary of his censorship of an entire book here, in Racism and the Censorship of Gay Imperialism, by Aren Aizura and also here. Contact me if you’d like a pdf of the censored material, but a quick search on the internet should yield results.
Read about the opposition to Tatchell’s campaigns in Africa here.
Yasmin Nair is director of the Yasmin Nair Foundation and the subject of the Netflix documentary, Everyone Steals from Yasmin Nair.
Photo: Krists Luhaers // @Kristsll.
This piece is not behind a paywall, but represents many hours of original research and writing. Please make sure to cite it, using my name and a link, should it be useful in your own work. I can and will use legal resources if I find you’ve plagiarised my work in any way. And if you’d like to support me, please donate and/or subscribe, or get me something from my wish list. Thank you.
