Posts tagged lgbtq

Homophobic? Maybe You’re Gay

“Why are political and religious figures who campaign against gay rights so often implicated in sexual encounters with same-sex partners? One theory is that homosexual urges, when repressed out of shame or fear, can be expressed as homophobia. Freud famously called this process a ‘reaction formation’… In this month’s issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, we and our fellow researchers provide empirical evidence that homophobia can result, at least in part, from the suppression of same-sex desire”

In 2010, designer Andy Chen called the Silence=Death logo “meaningless”, “effete” and even “self-stigmatizing” in his essay for Design Observer, see Not Queer, But Human. Radical fairies of yesterday were encouraged to assimilate and after watching the majority of their friends die of AIDS, encouraged by Chen to join some sort of imaginary “collective human tapestry”, and play nice. Fast forward two years, art photographer Iannis Delatolas was Gay-Bashed in Brooklyn last month. Rather courageously he didn’t stay silent, he told his story to The Village Voice, Photographer’s Gay-Bashing In Brooklyn Leads To Haunting Image, he empowered himself by making ART, and putting a still relevant graphic front and center on his chest for his latest self-portrait. Silence=Death stands the test of time, and unlike Chen’s assertion, social dissent is still powerful, even when it makes a few Gay-Bashing cowards feel a wee bit uncomfortable; and for us gay guys, still queer, even more human.

In 2010, designer Andy Chen called the Silence=Death logo “meaningless”, “effete” and even “self-stigmatizing” in his essay for Design Observer, see Not Queer, But Human. Radical fairies of yesterday were encouraged to assimilate and after watching the majority of their friends die of AIDS, encouraged by Chen to join some sort of imaginary “collective human tapestry”, and play nice.

Fast forward two years, art photographer Iannis Delatolas was Gay-Bashed in Brooklyn last month. Rather courageously he didn’t stay silent, he told his story to The Village Voice, Photographer’s Gay-Bashing In Brooklyn Leads To Haunting Image, he empowered himself by making ART, and putting a still relevant graphic front and center on his chest for his latest self-portrait. Silence=Death stands the test of time, and unlike Chen’s assertion, social dissent is still powerful, even when it makes a few Gay-Bashing cowards feel a wee bit uncomfortable; and for us gay guys, still queer, even more human.

Gayborhoods: Intersections of Land Use Regulation, Sexual Minorities, and the Creative Class

“Article advocates the municipal encouragement and maintenance of diversity, specifically the inclusion of sexual minorities, through changes in the traditional application of the forms of land use regulation. Bringing together previously distinct conversations about the societal goals of land use planning and the social value placed on diversity by increasing numbers of consumer voters, the Article draws on New Urbanism and Richard Florida’s concept of the creative class to argue that the presence in a municipality of a visible, accepted, and integrated LGBTQ community signifies and stimulates not only the social but the fiscal health of that municipality. Building on and distinguishing the historical development of naturally occurring gayborhoods, this Article suggests a rationale and mechanisms for encouraging the growth of such communities. Land use regulation is one means by which a diversity-sensitive municipality can establish marginal advantages over otherwise similarly situated municipalities; in a society offering a wide variety of choices to members of the creative class, this competitive advantage is significant.” Charles J. Ten Brink (Michigan State University - College of Law)

Real Men and Pink Suits

“Start with this fact: The truest measure of a man, indeed of a person, is not whom he lies down with but what he stands up for. If we must be judged, let it be in this way. And when we fall short, as we sometimes will, because humanity is fallible, let us greet each other with compassion and encouragement rather than ridicule and resentment.”

How Advertising Shapes The Image of Gayness in America

“The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in the presence of gays in American advertising. The media has transformed the stigmatized stereotype of gays into a new, socially desirable image of stylish consumers with high-end taste. This marketing strategy affects the way gays understand themselves and influences the meaning of gayness for society in general…The findings illuminate the influential role of advertising in informing and shaping personal identities and highlights the often ignored sociopolitical dimension of advertising…when marketers argue that no matter who they target, ‘it’s just business,’ their marketing messages actually have broader, cultural impacts on the minority community.”

Queer 2.0 Judith 'Jack' Halberstam Complicates Gender

“Masculinity has a bad reputation. It is not entirely undeserved, and the strength of feminist criticism, especially as it arose in the 1970s and 80s, was pointing out the masculine bias of our society and its cultural artifacts, like literature. So it was something of a surprise when, in the late 1990s, Judith ‘Jack’ Halberstam resuscitated masculinity. It was not the usual idea of masculinity, however: It was what she termed, in the title of her 1998 book, ‘female masculinity.’ In her turn to an aspect of gender that had been largely ignored in both feminism and queer studies, Halberstam represents a second generation of queer theory, underscoring the transitive nature of gender, or ‘transgender.’”

The End of Queer Theory

“Duke University Press ends its influential Series Q this month. It has been an impressive ride since the first book in the series: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s landmark 1993 collection of essays, Tendencies. Rereading her introduction, “Queer and Now,” I am reminded of the potent sense of possibility opened up 20 years ago by the idea of queer theory.”

John Updike’s Homophobic Book Review

David Haglund (Slate) revisits the controversy over John Updike’s homophobic review of Alan Hollinghurst’s novel The Spell. “Updike didn’t just express discomfort at the Hollinghurst’s precise, physically detailed observations about gay sex,” Haglund notes, “he actually wrote a kind of brief against gay love as a compelling novelistic subject.”

Halsted Plays Himself Collection of Articles Here, Here and Here: “Fred Halsted’s L.A. Plays Itself (1972) was gay porn’s first masterpiece: a sexually explicit, autobiographical, experimental film whose New York screening left even Salvador Dalí repeatedly muttering “new information for me.” Halsted, a self-taught filmmaker, shot the film over a period of three years in a now-vanished Los Angeles, a city at once rural and sleazy. Although his cultural notoriety at one point equaled that of Kenneth Anger or Jack Smith, Halsted’s star waned in the 1980s with the emergence of a more commercial gay-porn industry. After the death from AIDS of his long-time partner, lover, spouse (and tormentor) Joey Yale in 1986, Halsted committed suicide in 1989. In Halsted Plays Himself, acclaimed artist and filmmaker William E. Jones documents his quest to capture the elusive public and private personas of Halsted—to zero in on an identity riddled with contradictions. Jones assembles a narrative of a long-gone gay lifestyle and an extinct Hollywood underground, when independent films were still possible, and the boundary between experimental and pornographic was not yet established. The book also depicts what sexual liberation looked like at a volatile point in time—and what it looked like when it collapsed.”

Halsted Plays Himself Collection of Articles Here, Here and Here: “Fred Halsted’s L.A. Plays Itself (1972) was gay porn’s first masterpiece: a sexually explicit, autobiographical, experimental film whose New York screening left even Salvador Dalí repeatedly muttering “new information for me.” Halsted, a self-taught filmmaker, shot the film over a period of three years in a now-vanished Los Angeles, a city at once rural and sleazy. Although his cultural notoriety at one point equaled that of Kenneth Anger or Jack Smith, Halsted’s star waned in the 1980s with the emergence of a more commercial gay-porn industry. After the death from AIDS of his long-time partner, lover, spouse (and tormentor) Joey Yale in 1986, Halsted committed suicide in 1989. In Halsted Plays Himself, acclaimed artist and filmmaker William E. Jones documents his quest to capture the elusive public and private personas of Halsted—to zero in on an identity riddled with contradictions. Jones assembles a narrative of a long-gone gay lifestyle and an extinct Hollywood underground, when independent films were still possible, and the boundary between experimental and pornographic was not yet established. The book also depicts what sexual liberation looked like at a volatile point in time—and what it looked like when it collapsed.”

Your 1980s Morning Melt Down: Fresh from Atlanta to the runways of NYC, Rupaul, Lahoma Van Zandt and Lady Bunny, model for Stevie Stewart and David Holah’s Body Map. Sheeeeesh, and look at Leigh Bowery doing the announcing, genius. Also uncovered, a bit of footage from Network21 TV 1986 broadcast of Punk Body Map Rock fashion show. Video attributed to John Maybury, think layers, think Hilde Smith, think The Cat in the Hat Takes a Rumble with the Techno Fish.

David Wojnarowicz Clickable Journals and a Dateline - “Artist David Wojnarowicz’s thirty or so journals are stored in a pair of boxes in New York University’s Fales Library. Folders of loose photographs, tickets, and postcards are also included, as is an oversize wall calendar, sparsely annotated by Wojnarowicz, of the type one might find in the gift shop of the American Museum of Natural History (triceratops rooting in lush surrounds). “Series 1,” as this lot of the David Wojnarowicz Collection is designated, feels like a grouping of keepsakes: These are items in and by means of which Wojnarowicz marked, from 1970 to 1991, time’s passing. In 1992, he died at the age of thirty-seven.”*“Years Ago Before the Nation Went Bankrupt” was commissioned by Triple Canopy as part of its Internet as Material project area, supported in part by the Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Thanks to the Fales Library and Lisa Darms, PPOW, and Tom Rauffenbart

David Wojnarowicz Clickable Journals and a Dateline - “Artist David Wojnarowicz’s thirty or so journals are stored in a pair of boxes in New York University’s Fales Library. Folders of loose photographs, tickets, and postcards are also included, as is an oversize wall calendar, sparsely annotated by Wojnarowicz, of the type one might find in the gift shop of the American Museum of Natural History (triceratops rooting in lush surrounds). “Series 1,” as this lot of the David Wojnarowicz Collection is designated, feels like a grouping of keepsakes: These are items in and by means of which Wojnarowicz marked, from 1970 to 1991, time’s passing. In 1992, he died at the age of thirty-seven.”

*“Years Ago Before the Nation Went Bankrupt” was commissioned by Triple Canopy as part of its Internet as Material project area, supported in part by the Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Thanks to the Fales Library and Lisa Darms, PPOW, and Tom Rauffenbart

Freddie Mercury on the Plinth is a proposal by artist Aleksandra Mir to bring the statue of Freddie Mercury back to London on loan from Montreux for one year and to place it on the 4th Plinth in Trafalgar Square. Sign The Petition! “Freddie on the Plinth is a tribute to two people with an unlikely but beautiful connection: the legendary rock star Freddie Mercury (b 1946 – d 1991) and a Czech sculptor called Irena Sedlecka (b 1928). As a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Sedlecka was awarded the State Prize for excellence and thereafter created many socialist realist large-scale commissions before fleeing the Communist regime for England in 1966. It was in London, after Freddie’s death from AIDS in 1991, where she received the commission to create a larger-than-life memorial statue in bronze of the rock star.”  Interview w/Irena Sedlecka, See Mir’s Proposal, Sign the Petition, Check out more photos.

Freddie Mercury on the Plinth is a proposal by artist Aleksandra Mir to bring the statue of Freddie Mercury back to London on loan from Montreux for one year and to place it on the 4th Plinth in Trafalgar Square. Sign The Petition!

“Freddie on the Plinth is a tribute to two people with an unlikely but beautiful connection: the legendary rock star Freddie Mercury (b 1946 – d 1991) and a Czech sculptor called Irena Sedlecka (b 1928). As a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Sedlecka was awarded the State Prize for excellence and thereafter created many socialist realist large-scale commissions before fleeing the Communist regime for England in 1966. It was in London, after Freddie’s death from AIDS in 1991, where she received the commission to create a larger-than-life memorial statue in bronze of the rock star.” 

Interview w/Irena Sedlecka, See Mir’s Proposal, Sign the Petition, Check out more photos.

Good Luck (2010), Mattia Biagi.

Where Karl Lagerfeld Lives

Lagerfeld cautions, before giving a tour of his house, “’You will think I’m a madman…I throw everything away!’ he declared. ‘The most important piece of furniture in a house is the garbage can! I keep no archives of my own, no sketches, no photos, no clothes—nothing! I am supposed to do, I’m not supposed to remember!’”