The SSO A-Z guide to queer Sydney

V is for:

Vanilla Of all the sexual functions (and dysfunctions) contained within Sydney’s gay and lesbian communities, one of the most teased about and frequently practised is clean, injury-free white-sheet sex.

According to Wikipedia, vanilla sex when used by gay men can mean non-insertive (i.e. intercrural intercourse, manual stimulation, frottage etc), and the use of the word vanilla relates to vanilla-flavoured ice cream, the dullest of all flavours.

Not so, according to the Wikipedia writer: The term is not wholly accurate, however, as the concept of vanilla -“ in ice cream and other foods -“ can be very flavourful and interesting, and is rarely as bland as the stereotype would indicate.

Anecdotal evidence suggests there are plenty of vanilla enthusiasts out there, both men and women. However, the upcoming Leather Pride Week is a crap time to advertise it.

Vanstone, Amanda A bookworm and weimaraner lover, Amanda Vanstone comes across as quite a nice lady. Which is bizarre, because quite frankly her politics are horrible.

Students protested outside her Adelaide office when she was the minister for Education, and her track record since taking over the Immigration portfolio has been hideous.

So what’s our Mandy doing in this column? Well, she gets some kudos for her drag-like fashion sense and the way she puts pictures of her staff member’s pets on her official website.

But mostly it’s because Vanstone was the one who stood up at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Business Association dinner in 2004, just days after her government passed a law banning same-sex marriage.

They’d done it, she said, to keep religious groups happy. And what’s more, it didn’t mean anything: To me nothing has changed with that bill, she said. It was just a restatement.

At least she had the guts to say it to our faces.