February 2008 Archives
Tonight: The Last Fag Fridays Ever?By on February 29, 2008 2:09 PM | 2 Comments
Fag Fridays is a weekly gay dance party that's been going on in San Francisco for, oh I don't know, 30 years or something? FOREVER! And tonight, it goes out without so much as a flyer promotion! This is pretty upsetting.
Juanita More, who has hosted the party at PINK since it moved from its home of many years, The EndUp (where scenes from Tales of the City took place), sent out a bulletin telling folks to come see her perform at another party, and then casually mentioned that folks might come out and see her perform at the last Fag Fridays. Indeed, PINK's calendar for next Friday features some other party. And on the Fag Fridays Myspace page, at least one person is saying goodbye in the comments.
In any case, we'll be there tonight to say goodbye! Hope you will too.
xoxo
Trevor
Report: More than 1 in 100 US Adults in JailBy on February 28, 2008 6:20 PM | No Comments
A new report from the Pew Center on the States reveals that over 1 in 100 Americans are behind bars. Yes, that's a number greater than any country in the world. Prison industrial complex, anyone?
SFPD: Gay Sex = Basis for Crystal Meth Search WarrantBy on February 28, 2008 2:43 AM | No Comments
My trip to San Francisco turned out to dovetail beautifully for the monthly meeting of the SexPols, the sexuality discussion group that was spearheaded by Eric Rofes until his untimely death in June '06. Tonight, Michael Scarce presented his report that he delivered to the San Francisco Mayor's Citywide Task Force on Crystal Methamphetamine.
The data he collected for the report is shocking and *infuriating*! In particular, Scarce heard from many men that the SFPD Narcotics Division only needed evidence of men's sexual promiscuity as sufficient basis for obtaining a warrant for their arrest -- and as evidence to discredit them in a court of law. I'm going to quote at length here - because I think this research is SO IMPORTANT!
Late last year, a team of police officers entered the apartment of a gay male couple living at 19th and Castro Street, held them at gunpoint, and searched their home on the basis of a false and unsubstantiated allegation they were operating a meth lab in their residence. The bogus report was made by the couple's landlord and conspiring neighbor in an attempt to have them evicted from their rent-controlled apartment. Police were able to obtain a search warrant simply on the basis of observing a handful of men coming and going from the couple's residence in the course of a single evening.After their arrest, the prosecutor for the San Francisco District Attorney attempted to bolster the charges against them by discrediting their character with allegations of sexual immorality, which included a neighbor's report that 'shirtless men' would sometimes sit outside on the steps leading to the men's front door.
The attorney also disclosed the couple had hosted sex parties in the privacy of their home as evidence of their criminal deviance, even though no complaints for noise or other neighborhood disturbances had ever been made... Furthermore, the couple's HIV positive serostatus was introduced in testimony, implying the men represented a threat to community public health, noting the relationship between methamphetamine and HIV transmission.
I find this information so troubling. The report documents numerous cases of the police brutality and more generally invasions of privacy by the SFPD's narcotics division. Of all of the reports, THIS one pisses me off the most:
In another case, a local gay man made a police report that his password for accessing a cruising website had been changed by a casual acquaintance, and his account was being used without his consent by the acquaintance...SFPD officers informed the victim there was a special unit to assist gay men who had been victims of internet-related crime, despite having made public statements that they do not track or in any official capacity address internet-related crimes against gay men. Police agreed to pursue the matter in exchange for an unusual request: Upon regaining possession of the victim's account password, they would then use the account for undercover investigations of other web site members for a period of at least sixty days....
Officers used the man's account for two months on www.men4now.com, conducting drug-related surveillance of other members who indicated they 'party and play' in their profile. Police used the victim's existing screen name, description, and photos to gain trust in interacting and gathering information from other web site members who were already familiar with the victim's profile, had previously met the victim in person, had formed established relationships with the victim, and with whom the victim shared mutual friends and acquaintances.
I can't even put into words how DISGUSTING this kind of invasion / entrapment is -- it's infuriating. Shameful. Revolting. And funded by the PATRIOT ACT. Your tax dollars at work, folks.
You can -- and SHOULD -- read the rest of Michael's important report, here.
San Francisco New Age CraziesBy on February 27, 2008 7:57 PM | No Comments
So I'm sitting here at Cafe Flore in the Castro in San Francisco, and but of course there's a group of three women to my left discussing at length the "elements" and "planets" while regarding an astrology chart. "Venus rules Taurus and Libra. And Mars rules Aries." AGHHH! In fact, the teacher went over the different elements, and then gave the two younger women a quiz on which elements would be best for different things.
The weather here is beautiful. The people here are, well, a bit crazy. Oh San Fran!
By on February 25, 2008 6:55 PM | No Comments
A new study from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life - based on interviews with 35,000 Americans - shows that religious affiliatoin is shifting in the US. They found that:
The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey estimates the United States is 78 percent Christian and about to lose its status as a majority Protestant nation, at 51 percent and slipping.More than one-quarter of American adults have left the faith of their childhood for another religion or no religion at all, the survey found. Factoring in moves from one stream or denomination of Protestantism to another, the number rises to 44 percent.
One in four adults ages 18 to 29 claim no affiliation with a religious institution.
"In the past, certain religions had a real holding power, where people from one generation to the next would stay," said Penn State University sociologist Roger Finke, who consulted in the survey planning. "Right now, there is a dropping confidence in organized religion, especially in the traditional religious forms."
I get fed up with lefty nuts who use the word "Christian" or "Religious" to equate everything that's bad in the world. Religion is not inherently bad. As a Sociologist, I tend to side with Durkheim's views in his famous book The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, in which he argues that "God is society, writ large." In this way, organized religion can serve an important role in communities as places to negotiate shared values and norms. Increasingly, they are some of the only places where communities actively and regularly gather (see Putnam's book, Bowling Alone for more on this).
Many people demonize religion -- and some religion is surely worth demonizing -- but there is nothing inherent in religion that is bad. So when I see news that religious is affiliation is on the decline, I have mixed emotions. We ought to support the growth of progressive-minded denominations like the Unitarian Universalists (UU's) and the United Church of Christ (UCC), while finding ways to combat the spreading of fundamentalist Evangelical traditions. The two are not the same. We shouldn't forget that!
Microsoft Employee Bequeathes $65 Mil to LGBT / HIV OrgsBy on February 25, 2008 12:51 PM | No Comments
Rick Weiland (pictured, left, with Bill Gates, right, in 1976), one of the five first people to work for Microsoft, died of a self-inflected gun shot a year and a half ago. But it wasn't until just this weekend that his estate announced his massive bequest to LGBT rights and HIV/AIDS prevention organizations. $65 Million! The Seattle Times writes:
For the Pride Foundation, which has an annual budget of $2.5 million and endowment of $3 million, Weiland's gift of more than $19 million will significantly expand its efforts throughout the Northwest...Weiland gave another $46 million to the Pride Foundation to distribute to 10 national organizations over eight years.
Recipients will include the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Network, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the American Foundation for AIDS Research and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. For most of them, the bequest is the largest gift in their history.
Holy canoli!
P.S. How nelly does Bill Gates look in that photo? Don't you just wanna fist him? Loves it!
By on February 22, 2008 3:41 PM | No Comments
God I have never been more excited about getting on a jet plane. Tomorrow I fly to San Francisco for Spring Break, where the temperatures are about 40 degrees higher than here in Ann Arbor. THANK GOD! I can't wait to get out of this pit of despair.
My lovely friend Bonnie just posted this cute as a button photo of the two of us on Facebook from a few months back (August, I believe). Can't wait to see ya, Bon!
By on February 22, 2008 1:08 PM | 4 Comments | 1 TrackBack
So how amazing is XTube? For the unfamiliar, XTube is pretty much a variation of YouTube, but for porn. It's just incredible to see all these guys from across the world fucking. We've had porn for ages, but it's not a stretch to claim that porn is hardly a representation of what really happens when we turn of the lights and climb into bed (or, perhaps, into an elevator or rest-stop). The glistening muscle bodies; the hairless crevices; the strained grunting and groaning. It's performance art.
Now, XTube has a bit of that, of course. Anytime you turn on the cameras, you're bound to get even amateur folks in their bedroom doing a bit of acting. But this happens even without a camera around, so I take much of what I see on XTube to be a reflection of what's actually going on in queer men's bedrooms.
So, now that I've praised XTube's democratic potential, I think it's also very interesting to look at the kinds of porn that are making it to the coveted "Top Favorites" block. Basically, members can after watching a video push a button to indicate to save it as one of their favorites. The videos with the most number of folks adding it as their favorite get added to the "Top Favorites" page. Makes sense.
It may come as no surprise to most of us that the *vast* majority of these videos are guys fucking without condoms. More precisely, of the 20 vidoes from the top 25 that feature anal sex, only one explicitly shows condom use. Two are ambigious, and the rest (18) are explicitly bareback.
So this tells us something about barebacking, I think. Many of the folks I know who say they enjoy bareback sex put sensation at the forefront. Condoms reduce sensitivity, and also make it difficult for some guys to keep an erection. But the fact that some many guys are pushing these bareback videos to the top tells us that fantasy is a *big* component of what the drive for unprotected sex is all about. After all, why does seeing a condom in a video seem to be such a huge turn-off for many guys? It's about ruining that fantasy.
Now, curiously, there are a few dominant scripts that seem to be playing out in these barebacking videos. One is the "boyfriend" script (see photo below). These include videos, like the one from the top 25 titled "Enjoying my Boy Friends Horse Cock," basically alluding to the fact that the two men in the video are romantically involved. Another script is the one of the "buddy" or "friend" -- with videos titled "My New Pal" or "Bike Dude fucks his buddy's hair ass in garage." Again, the titles suggest a level of familiarity and intimacy, although somewhat reduced from the boyfriend narrative. And finally, we have the casual encounter hookup scripts, which vary in explicit language about the nature of the encounter. Some rely on a kind of controlling / S&M-light kind of rhetoric ("Big Dicked Punk Twink Fucks Young Skater BareBack"), while others rely on scripts about anoynmous sex ("me getting fucked in public toilet").
The point of this all is to say that, although XTube is allegedly just video clips of the sex gay men are having, users are relying on and constructing porn-like narratives to background the video. This is obviously about fantasy. So I think we should be paying attention to the kinds of stories that guys on XTube are enjoying, since I think that tells us a fair amount about what's generally "hot" right now in the minds of gay men.
And right now, the hotness is barebacking. There is no question about it. I think the fact that bareback porn is so prevalent and popular dispels the idea that barebacking is popular primarily because of sensation. It's about fantasy construction. We can use this as a potential prevention tool. Making hot amateur porn for XTube that features safer sex practices may very well be a tactic that prevention organizations will want to consider.
So my prevention message today to all you hot sexy guys out there with a exhibitionist streak: Make some porn!
xoxo
Trevor
Gay Men's Health Leadership Academy!By on February 22, 2008 12:40 AM | 2 Comments
I got a lovely phone call last evening from none other than Chris Bartlett, a dear friend and fabulous organizer on a range of LGBT health issues. We've been working together on organizing the various LGBT health summits and getting LGBT health on the agenda for the Creating Change Conference a few weeks back in Detroit. He's a gem.
Anytime I get a phone call from him, I'm happy. But I was particularly thrilled yesterday when he informed me that I had received a scholarship to attend the upcoming Gay Men's Health Leadership Academy in Guerneville, California March 21-24. Wew-hew! I booked my flight last night (thank God for frequent flyer miles!) - I'm SO excited! I hope to be podcasting for "The Gayest Podcast in Michigan" there, keeping everyone informed as to the goingson at the event.
For those who are unfamiliar, the GMH Leadership Academy is basically a three-day training and networking session for gay male organizers doing work on gay men's health issues. It happens a little under twice a year, and I've been aching to go since Eric Rofes encouraged me to do so back in 2005. Rofes of course founded the GMH Movement in the US. He sadly passed away in June of 2006.
I can't wait!!!!!
By on February 21, 2008 11:31 PM | No Comments
My recording gear arrived today - so I'll soon begin podcasting! In the meantime, I spent the evening recording my essay for Beyond Masculinity, the online anthology of essays on gender and politics by queer men that I've been working on for the past two years. It'll be up very soon! In the meantime, here's a short snippet from my essay, "The Making of a Southern Faggot."
In this piece, I begin by reflecting on my work with national LGBT organizations that often strategize to put "marketable" people in front of the cameras -- and react to the sissyphobia that exists within our communities. I get a little bit rowdy! Enjoy!
By on February 20, 2008 7:56 PM | No Comments
Phew. I think I have an addition to web design. In any case, after much toiling, the structure for my new project (linked with this blog), "The Gayest Podcast in Michigan," is now up. Check it out here! I'd love some feedback now, before I get knee-deep.
By on February 19, 2008 2:58 PM | No Comments
Get ready, Michigan! Next week I'll begin recording what I hope will be a weekly podcast on LGBTQ issues called, "The Gayest Podcast in Michigan." In this series, I will interview LGBTQ activists, organizers, and thinkers about the work that they do both here in Michigan and elsewhere. Spring Break is next week, so I'll begin my series with an interview of a San Francisco treat. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, how do you like my initial logo design? :)
By on February 18, 2008 4:25 PM | 1 Comment
Folks in the prevention community heard about this a bit ago, but it's now public knowledge. This sums up the findings:
Women participated from nine months to two years, with 4,244 completing the study. About 18 percent dropped out, often because they became pregnant and the gel is not known to be safe for use in pregnancy. Another 13 percent could not be found for follow up information.At the end of the study, there were 134 new HIV infections in the Carraguard group and 151 in the fake gel group — a rate of 3.3 infections per 100 women each year in the microbicide group and 3.7 for the placebo group.
There are several ongoing trials still in place involving both rectal and vaginal microbicides. You can find out more about the work that Jim Pickett and others are doing in the world of rectal microbicides, on the newly redesigned website of the International Rectal Microbicide Advocates, here.
UPDATE: My friend from San Francisco, Mitchel, just posted this helpful comment:
While it is disappointing that the results of this trial were not what we hoped there are still some good outcomes here. this is the first phase 3 trial to finish its run completely, showing that a microbicide trial can be run safely, ethically and successfully. i really hope this accomplishment alone provides momentum for moving forward with new microbicide candidates.
Thanks, Mitchell, for the 411! He also passed along this helpful website, The Global Campaign for Microbicides. Check it out!
By on February 17, 2008 10:58 PM | 1 Comment
Controversial and longtime SF AIDS activist Michael Petrelis has just posted this video from a recent meeting of the San Francisco Dept of Public Health's HIV Prevention Planning Council below on his blog. Petrelis, despite his long history of being a real douchebag (see any number of accounts on this - even in Urvashi Vaid's book, "Virtual Equality"), makes a few decent points. I actually really debated whether to even cite this video, because it draws attention to him, but I think the video provides some insight into the issues / emotions at hand.
I haven't yet blogged about these matters, because - well - plenty of voices have already chimed in on the topic. There are two issues here. The most significant here is the recent alleged "outbreak" of treatment-resistant staph infections in San Francisco which have been hyped up in the media in part due to institutions like UCSF and other gay community-based AIDS organizations.
Now, it's not to say that these infections have not indeed occurred. But, well, like my friend Chris Bartlett remarked to me last weekend, it seems like at least twice a year health organizations have to come out and scare the shit out of gay men. I only need to draw your attention to the ridiculous media frenzy over the alleged "superinfection" case in New York City that was blown way out of proportion in 2005. That patient, of course, is now responding to treatment.
Similarly, a few staph cases among gay men has been disgustingly overhyped in media reports. Any potential link between gay sex and disease is readily eaten up and spat out by media outlets who love to remind us of the danger that is always lurking around the corner in our sex lives. Take this ABC news story from just a few weeks ago. And I quote:
Flesh-eating bacteria. A drug-resistant menace, spreading silently through hospital hallways.If one were asked to come up with a recipe for a panic-inducing disease, it would be hard to come up with something more horrifying than methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- or MRSA.
But even as new research suggests that the disease may be spreading though the homosexual community -- and could even be developing into a full-blown epidemic -- health experts studying MRSA say panic over the disease may be premature.
Even though they're reporting here that perhaps the panic might be premature, the damage is already done. The title of the article "The Great MRSA Epidemic: Is It Time to Worry?" and its opening line ("Flesh-eating bacteria") does all the talking. The title in fact matter-of-factly states that there is indeed an epidemic already, and just asks us to consider whether we might want to start taking action.
And then of course a few lines down they again repeat that "the disease may be spreading though the homosexual community," despite the fact that deaths due to MRSA are primarily among other groups (elderly, hospital patients, etc). This isn't another gay epidemic! Puh-lease. When a few hundred black folks in South Carolina come down with the flu, we don't suddenly see press releases about a potentially dangerous Black flu epidemic.
Give the media any fodder to remind America of the intrinsic link between gay sex and disease, and they lap it up. Researchers and institutions have got to start being much more careful and considerate in the way they disseminate new, *preliminary* data on gay men's health. Recklessly throwing it out to the public is something like throwing a kitten to a pack of wolves. They will chew it up, mangle it into something unrecognizable, and spit it right back out. This isn't news, for God's sake! We've seen this time and time again - and yet here we are again, in another situation where the media is doing disgusting violence against gay men's communities -- often times with the full support of AIDS organizations. Shameful.
The second issue at hand here is the recent release of a Swiss study that argues that HIV-positive people on HAART (highly active anti-retroviral therapy) with undetectable viral loads cannot sexually transmit the virus to their partners. This isn't news to many of us -- the Swiss study wasn't, after all, original research. It was instead a review of already existing literature, some of which has been around for years now. You can find the study here in French and now a rough English translation here.
SF's DPH and the SF AIDS Foundation issued a joint statement saying that they "do not endorse" the Swiss Study. Well of course they don't! I mean, I hate to break it to everyone, but as a sociologist things couldn't be more clear: AIDS organizations have an interest in promoting panic and suppressing evidence of good news. It's how they get their money. This is not a revolutionary statement. It's the name of organizational / institutional politics - and part of the growing pains associated with community organizations being swallowed up by government agencies / funding priorities. You want CDC money? Show us a crisis - and follow our rules. Health departments and CDC-funded agencies everywhere happily oblige. They want to keep their jobs, after all. It's fucked up - but it's the name of the game, folks!
Now this isn't to say that the Swiss study is conclusive evidence. It's not. And we should all acknowledge that. And I certainly appreciate the tricky situation that agencies are in when confronted with this kind of data. How do you promote data that can be easily misinterpreted, thus leading to potential new infections? I don't have the answers here.
But I do know that there is plenty of data on HIV transmision out there that is kept out of gay men's hands, I presume because they think we're not capable of making informed decisions about our sex lives. But if the home-grown trends in seroadaptation in San Francisco and other urban center teach us anything, it's that gay men are quite ingenious in developing innovative approaches to prevention - without the help of prevention organizations. Which is a good thing, since our organizations often times don't do much to help us out in that regard.
Phew. I admit this post is a bit reactionary - but I had to get some steam out! So, without further adieu, here's that Petrelis video I mentioned at the beginning:
Voila! The New TrevorHoppe.comBy on February 16, 2008 5:17 PM | No Comments
Okay so it was always silly to keep the blog seperate from my homepage. Now the blog is the homepage! I wanted to revamp the site to make the blog a more central focus of the page, while also keeping access to my published work. Done and done! I hope everyone likes!!!
xoxo
T
Straight Boy in a Gay BathhouseBy on February 16, 2008 2:02 PM | No Comments
I just stopped by Lifelube for a read, and I happened upon their posting of a VERY amusing video from SOGAYTV documenting a straight guy's adventure into a gay bathhouse. I actually think this video is quite revealing, particularly the cute boy's reaction post-visit in which he's obviously a bit freaked (starting at 3:10). Hey - we gay boys are just as freaked out our first time, too! I love the part around 5:30 when he talks about poking around a gloryhole. He rambles:
"And I'm like, okay, there's a hole in the wall - is there something there - can I see you? Do I jerk off? What do I do? And I wasn't like getting turned on - but whatever. And then you look in and there's like, cum everywhere! And there's cum on the ground every once in a while. And you can feel it, like slippery on your feet... God damn."
Amazing! In any case, enjoy!
Where's the Pleasure in Gay Sex?By on February 16, 2008 1:46 AM | No Comments
I've been thinking a lot lately about the seeming disconnect in gay culture between two seemingly parallel concepts: pleasure and desire. I think often times we use the two words as if they were one and the same -- that they are inextricably bound together. But I want to consider the possibility that -- in fact -- they are very distinct for us gay boys. Consider the following two questions. Imagine for a moment, the best sex you've ever had. Most gay boys I know would immediately conjure up passionate stories of sweaty, intense play -- perhaps with some rhetoric of intimacy thrown in.
But in contrast, if you ask a gay man what's the hottest sex they've ever had -- I think you would get a very different story. It's more likely to involve an elevator, stranger in an alley, or public bathroom. It's about fantasy - the kind of story that makes our ears perk up. It's about being fucked mercilessly. Being tied up or more generally being taken. I speak of course from a bottom's perspective -- but I think you might imagine the reverse for men who identify as a top.
Indeed, despite my identity as a bottom, much of the best sex I've ever had has been with other bottoms -- not with tops. I don't think this is evidence that somehow I'm a closet top. Instead, I think there's something about bottoms that's not so much about the desire to be fucked -- but about the desire to please. Being a bottom is about wanting to make your partner cum, to allow oneself to be used for their pleasure.
And so I want to propose something perhaps a bit radical. Perhaps us bottoms ought to stop furiously seeking to be used / abjected / thrown around by a hot, butch, muscley top -- and start exploring what sex might be like between two bottoms. Wanting to fulfill the kind of fantasy that I've just described is certainly exciting, and far be it from me to tell boys what kind of sex is right or wrong. But I'm not talking about what people ought or ought not to do. Instead, I'm talking about finding ways for us to push our limits and have the best sex we can imagine.
I find that, often times, the best part of quickie sex with a top isn't the actual act itself -- but the pleasure I get later after he has left and I can reimagine / fantasize about the encounter. In other words, sex that is hot in theory may not actually feel that great in the moment - but you sure enjoy jerking off thinking about it for the next few weeks!
Now of course I'm painting with broad strokes here. Plenty of guys out there surely have sex lives that are both "hot" and pleasurable. I don't want to be accused of saying that this is the way it is for all gay men -- or that all tops are one way and all bottoms are another way. Clearly this isn't the case. But there are certainly cultural norms and expectations in gay culture that set us up for the kind of sex lives I've described. Thus, it wasn't surprising that when I searched Google for images with the term "gay pleasure," the image below popped up. It's actually quite beautiful / striking. I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this!
xoxo
Trevor
By on February 15, 2008 8:43 AM | No Comments
I'm at the end of my wits here, people! I've had the flu twice - and it just keeps snowing ALL THE TIME! GET ME OUTTA HERE!
Thankfully, a week from tomorrow I fly out to San Francisco for Spring Break. Anything - ANYTHING - to take me away!
By on February 14, 2008 5:50 PM | No Comments
Okay this is a question for all the computer geeks out there. I've just added a list of tags using MovableType's "MTTags" feature, as you can see to your right. But there's just one problem. While the entire list of tags appears when I bring up the page in Internet Explorer, only the first 115 tags show up in Firefox! WTF?! There's a screenshot below to illustrate the problem. Any ideas here? I'm totally confused!
UPDATE: Phew. It's fixed!
By on February 14, 2008 5:18 PM | No Comments
18 people have reportedly been shot at Northern Illinois University just outside of Chicago . This just breaks my heart! I'm supposed to be headed to Chicago this weekend to see my friend, Spencer. My heart goes out to those affected!
I don't think we've even begun to understand school shootings. And, since it seems that the assailant has been shot and killed, we likely won't get any closer after this terrible event. Almost two years ago now, a student drove his SUV into the pit at my alma mater - UNC Chapel Hill. And there are plenty of other examples in recent years of this kind of violence on college campuses. We've been relying on the media, I think, to give us an understanding. The media will never provide us useful tools for understanding school violence. They're caught up in hype and pseudo-scientific psychobabble. How do we even begin to wrap our heads around it?
By on February 14, 2008 3:03 PM | No Comments
Jane Fonda was on the Today show this morning to talk about her appearance in the Vagina Monologues -- the show's 10th anniversary performance. And for pete's sake, she let slip a "vulgarism" (as the media is referring to it). It's just a cunt, honey! It ain't so bad. In any case, Meredith Viera and NBC got their underbritches all in a twist and apologized on-air 10-minutes later. Here's the footage!
Wal-Mart to Carry "WET" Lube!By on February 14, 2008 11:49 AM | No Comments
It's about time! For years we've known that easy access to lubricant is a huge issue for HIV prevention and sexual health more broadly. Newsweek has somewhat prudish coverage of Wal-Mart's decision to start carrying this product (and just in time for Valentine's Day!). E.g. this quote:
Nor are they the most risqué items to appear on pharmacy shelves in the last six months. Indeed, certain aisles are starting to look like supply sites for Cosmopolitan magazine's sex tips section.
Oh, puh-lease! Condoms and lube hardly constitute some kind of revolution. But they do certainly have a huge impact on sexual health. And with this in mind, I've just added a new category here: "Sexual Health." Inspired by Wal-Mart! Whodathunkit?
Happy VD.By on February 14, 2008 11:08 AM | No Comments
Bah humbug. Another Valentine's Day sans-date! It's actually rather remarkable - I've never had a date on Valentine's Day. Then again, I've never had a boyfriend for more than three months. So I guess statistically the odds are improbable. Anywho, for those who can enjoy it, have a fabulous time!
A Few Cosmetic ChangesBy on February 12, 2008 8:09 PM | No Comments
As you can see, I've made a few minor changes around here. I'm going to work on generating that blogroll soon to link me up with more folks out there. Hope you enjoy!
Making it Work: Mobilizing Lesbian & Gay Identities in the 21st CenturyBy on February 12, 2008 1:02 AM | No Comments
Now that I've had a few days to clear my head, post-Creating Change, I wanted to share a bit about my experiences presenting with fellow UM-er Paul Farber at the conference. We presented a workshop titled, "Making it Work: Mobilizing Lesbian & Gay Identities in the 21st Century" on Sunday morning - bright and early!
I came to Paul last fall to propose that we coordinate something for Creating Change, and in particular to consider facilitating a workshop that examined the difficulties identity-based movements will face in the coming years. But this is not news, of course. Lefties -- who often cut their teeth in identity-based movements and thus owe much to their existence -- take pleasure in casting stones at the thoroughly dead horse, "identity politics." I wanted to work with Paul to create a dialogue that avoided lamenting the pitfalls of identity-based organizing, because we are by now all too aware of these critiques.
Let's face it: "gay" and "lesbian" have dried up in some major urban centers as motiviating factors for organizing. Getting a thousand San Francisco gay men out to anything to advocate based on their sexual identity is laughable. It just isn't going to happen. That said, there are other places where there is still rich possibility for using these categories as starting place. There is diversity. And I wanted this workshop to recognize that.
And recognize it, we did. Though we faced stiff competition in our workshop block, we managed to get about 10 lively participants into the room who came from very different backgrounds. We had a member of the Task Force Board of Directors; Robyn Ochs, a bisexuality advocate who travels the nation speaking primarily on college campuses; a Midwesterner who worked primarily with the MCC (Metropolitan Community Church); two Michigan undergrads; an older lesbian who came out of the feminist movements of the 70s and 80s; and more! It was a great group of people.
Of course, the workshop was intended to raise questions, rather than answer them. Several key questions emerged out of our discussion:
- Is it possible to flip issues to the front of our organizing, and identity to the back, and still wind up building communities of primarily LGBT people?
- How do we deal with increasing institutionalization of our movements?
- How can we use an asset-based model to improve and reframe our organizing efforts?
- How do we define success in regards to political organizing?
- What are the ingredients for that success - and how might we expect them to vary from place to place, and cultural context to cultural context?
I was particularly interested in that third question. We began the session with this quote from Ritch Savin-William's recent book, The New Gay Teenager:
In some respects, these teenagers might relate better to their pre-labeled, pre-identified grandparents than they do with their gay-liberated parents or their gay-resigned older cousins... For them 'gay' carries too much baggage."
We spent a good amount of time trying to digest what the "baggage" might look like. But I was struck at the end of the session by one of the participants who noted that baggage isn't just a ball and chain, but is also necessarily a set of resources. Your clothes and shaving kit, for example. Reframing in this way seems to me to be potentially very useful.
This made me think that perhaps what is needed is some resistance to the postmodern critique of "gay" and "lesbian," which to me seems to be implicitly a neoliberal project. What I mean by that is that these critiques have often demanded that categories reflect every tiny detail imaginable about an individual's existence. To that end, they have promoted the proliferation of increasingly particular sexual identities, like, for instance, "homoflexible" or even just the now hugely popular,"queer" (queer of course was never meant to be an identity, and was rather meant as a resistance to sexual identity itself - but nevermind that).
Along the way the old feminist addage, "the personal is political," has been perverted from its original meaning (a statement about the need for an analysis of the domestic sphere as a realm of politics) to how I have heard many use it today as a way to locate the starting point for politics at the level of individual experience. This last part is critical -- we have moved to a place where we expect and encourage our politics to flow from our own narrow experiences. This is dangerous, and to me, is why the postmodern / queer identity proliferation has had unintended neoliberal consequences.
Alas, it's 1:30 AM, and I am exhausted. I'll hopefully keep thinking about these issues, and churn something out more substantial in the coming months.
Michael Kors: The Annoying Guy Who Talks During the MovieBy on February 11, 2008 1:03 PM | No Comments
Okay, so I won't spoil anything by posting pictures from their Fashion Week collections, but the Project Runway designers have debuted their works at Fashion Week and they are now available online. Just Google to find it!
I was flipping through the photos, and I was amused by these two in particular. You know Kors is just chatty Kathy throughout the whole damn thing - I'm sure Nina Garcia and Posh were thrilled! Especially Posh because it forced her to actually politely smile in the first photo! Oh, and I *love* Victoria doing her best to look like she's taking *very* important notes in the second picture. Loves it! Enjoy!
By on February 10, 2008 3:04 PM | No Comments | 2 TrackBacks
Another year, another Creating Change. I've been to four of these things before, but I have to say - this year was moving in a way that I haven't felt since the first year I attended back in '02 in Portland. Portland was overwhelming in a different way. I was 18 and completely new to LGBT activism - just managing to comprehend the program book was a feat back then. I spent much of my time this year helping out in the Youth Hospitality Suite, and I've just been overwhelmed by how beautiful, dedicated, and enthusiastic the young people I interacted with this year have been. It sounds all very cliche I know, but really - the people who flock to Creating Change are my people. I feel it in my bones. They're the salt of the earth. They're the reason I do all the work that I do.
After a semester and a half of my PhD professionalization machine, it was so fucking amazing to be around so many passionate, caring, and welcoming LGBT people -- people who believe deeply in building community and welcoming their brothers and sisters. They ask you how you are doing, and how they can help you in the work that you do. They tell you how proud they are, and thank you for continuing to work tirelessly in fighting the good fight.
This all may sound a bit exaggerated - but if it is, it is only because my experiences working with activists are so qualitatively different than my experiences with academics. While good activists are committed to making their work accessible and reflective of the communities they are a part of, academics enjoy standing around jerking each other off with fancy 4-syllable words, making devastating critiques of things with no relevance to 99.9% of the world. Okay, so maybe I'm guilty of exaggerating a bit. Not all activists are as fantastic as I make them sound, just as not all academics are as pretentious as I've just described. But really, standing in the middle of the lobby of the Creating Change hotel, I felt an energy and a sense of belonging that I hadn't felt in years.
It shook me to my core. Now back in my apartment in Ann Arbor, I feel a deep sense of mourning for my activist roots. I drove back from the hotel Thursday night after a four-hour blissful shift volunteering in the Youth Suite with tears rolling down my face. One difficult and painful question pulsed through my veins: Was academia the right choice for me?
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy doing my work here at Michigan. And I believe it has direct activist implications. But I miss the on-the-ground work -- and, most of all, I miss working with people who have dedicated their lives to advancing social justice. Those are my people. They make my heart swell. Oy - and boys with radical politics make my knees weak (seriously, though - what would activism be without a few good make-out sessions?).
My heart aches. It's just the truth. I'm afraid that academia will turn me into a cold, uncaring journal-writing robot who puts advancing his career ahead of my community. My people.
Have I turned my back on them?
By on February 1, 2008 9:10 AM | 1 Comment
Okay so I know I haven't blogged in forever, and this is kind of a lame entry to just throw out there, but I've been crazy busy! In any case, as a grad student strapped for cash (and as a Michigander often snowed in and unable to get to the grocery), this new website is just fucking amazing. It's called SuperCook. Basically, you enter in all the ingredients in your kitchen, and it tells you what recipes you can make with what you already have. No need to go to the store! This blows my mind. I'm making tuna burgers for lunch cause my 9 AM class was cancelled! Fuck yea! It even will tell you what ingredients you might buy next time you're at the store that will add the most number of recipes. Wowza!
Enjoy: http://www.supercook.com/
