My Friend Karina

By David Schneider

I had a friend named, well let's call her Karina. I met Karina through my St. John activities, back when Paul McCartney had his big show at the Adelaide Oval, a time also of great note to me as during the concert set up it was the first and thus far only time that I have been called upon to perform expired air resuscitation on someone. When I first met Karina practically the first words out of her mouth were "I'm bisexual". This was delivered in tones which made it readily evident that anyone who had a problem with this would soon have a few problems of their own. Never the less Karina and I sort of hit it off and, with various ups and downs, became quite good friends.

Karina is one of those people who has been right out there fighting for the rights of non-heterosexual people in general, and for bisexuals and women in particular. Karina came to be a bit of a role model for me. She had her ideals and she was not afraid to stand up for them, to fight the Good Fight whenever the need arose. We had long talks about feminism and the role of women in our society and mass media. We talked about the non-heterosexual (Queer) community, more a series of overlapping communities than one distinct community, and talked about prejudice within that community.

My friendship with Karina became very important to me. She encouraged me to stand up for what I believed to be right. I supported her with those aspects of her ideals that I believed to be true. She persuaded me from some of my prejudices, for example, her arguments and actually meeting some sex workers changed my position from not wanting to know that sex work existed, to one of being pro sex work law reform. Indeed it was Karinas' example that first inspired me to walk into my local Student's Association Office and nominate for the position of General Student Representative at Underdale.

Then something changed. Instead of being equals in friendship Karina began to adopt a superior attitude. She loaned me a famous piece of women's literature called The Women's Room to read. I found the book to be very interesting and quite moving in some parts. Yet when I returned the book to her I was subjected to what can only be described as an interrogation. What did I think about this part? What were your feelings about this? Question after question. As this went on the process became so painful to me that I deliberately gave false answers to her.

The final chapter was something quite interesting. One fine day I made a pass at one of Karina's two female housemates. I had been invited over to kill a bit of time with the woman in question and she had decided to go into great detail concerning her views on sex, sexuality and so forth. Needless to say they were remarkably similar to Karinas' and generally revolved around the theme that anyone should be allowed to sleep with whoever they choose, regardless of gender, that sex is good and we should all be allowed to express our sexuality however we please as long as we don't harm anyone, and so on. After a while I got the general impression that a pass was expected, so, considering that the woman was not unattractive and it had been awhile, I dutifully made my pass. I was gracefully turned down, breathed a sigh of relief (this boy-girl sex thing tends to be more complicated than it's generally made out to be) and made no further efforts in that particular regard.

It was with some surprise that I later found myself on the receiving end of a most remarkable phone call from Karina. In this call Karina severely chastised me for my undue attempts to have my wicked way with her friend, and advised me in no uncertain terms that after careful discussion with her friend it had been determined that I was an "unsafe" person. As such it would no longer be appropriate for her to be my friend and, by the way, this was her goodbye call. Needless to say this confused and upset me quite a bit. I wasn't sure how or why, but it looked like the goal posts had been through an organisational review and had been relocated to somewhere in the stands.

When it came right down to it there were two different sets of rules being used in the game of friendship. And here is the problem, friendship is not a game, something to be played with and fiddled with whenever the mood takes you. In a normal friendship, as in any other form of relationship, there needs to be give and take. In my relationship there gradually came about a situation in which this no longer happened, rather Karina placed herself in a position of sitting in judgement over me. She judged me because I am male, she judged me because I am white, she judged me because I am heterosexual, and she judged me because I am these three things and attempted to practice what she preached.

I was judged by her, and found wanting, because as my sexuality and gender were not the same as hers it was not deemed appropriate by her for me to play by the same rules as herself. As long as I acted to affirm her right to live her life as she desired, but did not attempt to do similar, I was deemed to be a "safe" person, but as soon as I attempted to play by the same set of rules I was deemed to be "unsafe". When Karina did this what she was saying was that your rights shall be protected only so long as they do not conflict with what I perceive to be mine. This is a dangerous concept.

Even now, about two years down the track, this situation continues to fill me with a profound sense of sadness and disappointment whenever I think on it. Occasionally I see Karina about the place, she ignores me, and I can't help but think "hypocrite".

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