April 2009 Archives

So in about 5 hours I'll wake up and head to the airport for my flight to Puerto Rico! My parents have generously planned a week-long cruise for us around the Carribean. After a grueling two weeks of grading hundreds of papers, writing almost half a dozen, and taking a Mock Preliminary Exam -- I am READY for a break! Jeebus.

I've never been on a cruise before, but I think it's safe to wager that I'll come back 10 pounds heavier and perhaps a bit redder. And hopefully with the aid of some lemon juice, perhaps a bit blonder! Wew-hew! I'm excited. But it means I won't be posting here much at all. So I hope that Jackson keeps pumping out the goodness, and perhaps a few of the contributors I've invited will step out of the woodwork to introduce themselves and throw some ideas in your face.

xoxoxo

Trevor

LOS ANGELES (AP) -

Beatrice Arthur, the tall, deep-voiced actress whose razor-sharp delivery of comedy lines made her a TV star in the hit shows "Maude" and "The Golden Girls" and who won a Tony Award for the musical "Mame," died Saturday. She was 86.

Arthur died peacefully at her Los Angeles home with her family at her side, family spokesman Dan Watt said. She had cancer, Watt said, declining to give details.

"She was a brilliant and witty woman," said Watt, who was Arthur's personal assistant for six years. "Bea will always have a special place in my heart."

In a 2008 interview with The Associated Press, Arthur said she was lucky to be discovered by TV after a long stage career, recalling with bemusement CBS executives asking about the new "girl."

"I was already 50 years old. I had done so much off-Broadway, on Broadway, but they said, `Who is that girl? Let's give her her own series,'" Arthur said.

"Maude" scored with television viewers immediately on its CBS debut in September 1972, and Arthur won an Emmy Award for the role in 1977.

"She was an incredible actress and a woman I will miss, and I think everyone else will," said Bud Yorkin, producer of "Maude" with partner Lear.

"Golden Girls" (1985-1992) was another groundbreaking comedy, finding surprising success in a television market increasingly skewed toward a younger, product-buying audience.

The interplay among the four women and their relations with men fueled the comedy, and the show amassed a big audience and 10 Emmys, including two as best comedy series and individual awards for each of the stars.

McClanahan said Arthur felt constrained by the show during its later years and in 1992 she announced she was leaving "Golden Girls."

"Bea liked to be the star of the show, she didn't really like to do that ensemble playing," McClanahan said.

McClanahan first worked with Arthur on "Maude," playing her best friend, Vivian. The women quickly became close friends in real life. McClanahan recalled Arthur as a kind and caring person with a no-nonsense edge.

The three other stars returned in "The Golden Palace," but it lasted only one season.

Arthur was born Bernice Frankel in New York City in 1922. When she was 11, her family moved to Cambridge, Md., where her father opened a clothing store. At 12 she had grown to full height, and she dreamed of being a petite blond movie star like June Allyson. There was one advantage of being tall and deep-voiced: She was chosen for the male roles in school plays.

In 1999, Arthur told an interviewer of the three influences in her career: "Sid Caesar taught me the outrageous; (method acting guru) Lee Strasberg taught me what I call reality; and ('Threepenny Opera' star) Lotte Lenya, whom I adored, taught me economy."

In recent years, Arthur made guest appearances on shows including "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Malcolm in the Middle." She was chairwoman of the Art Attack Foundation, a non-profit performing arts scholarship organization.

Arthur is survived by her sons and two granddaughters. No funeral services are planned.

We'll miss you Bea, thanks for being a friend.

Christian Student Group at Cornell Cans Gay Leader
By Trevor on April 24, 2009 1:48 PM | No Comments

From their campus newspaper:

A campus Christian group that receives funding from the student activity fee is coming under scrutiny after a student was asked by advisors to step down from its leadership team when he told them that he had openly accepted his homosexuality. This incident is also raising questions about the effectiveness of campus mechanisms for addressing instances of discrimination.

Chris Donohoe '09, who joined the Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship when he was a freshman, said he had been openly struggling to reconcile his sexuality with his faith in Chi Alpha before he was asked to step down from the leadership team by Matt and Tracy Herman, the organization's pastors. The Hermans, both members of Chi Alpha at Missouri State University before graduating in 2002, became Cornell Chi Alpha's campus pastors in 2006.

The leadership team consists of 12 or 13 especially dedicated students who lead bible studies, teach and are "good examples," according to Danielle D'Ambrosio '10, Chi Alpha's president. The leadership team differs from titled leadership positions because students do not have to apply to be part of the team.

Before joining the leadership team, Donohoe was vice president during his junior year. To enter a titled position in Chi Alpha, students must apply through the Hermans and demonstrate that they uphold certain values, including not engaging in premarital sex, and refraining from drinking alcohol and taking drugs, according to Donohoe.

"I thought it would be an awesome opportunity to be an openly gay man in a Christian organization," Donohoe said.

After Donohoe finished his term as vice president, he was going to be on the leadership team last fall. The Hermans told Donohoe that they were comfortable with his position as long as he did not engage in a relationship. However, after Donohoe met his boyfriend last summer and affirmed his acceptance of his sexuality, the Hermans asked him to step down from the team without consulting the rest of the organization.

"I told them I've thought about [my sexuality] and I'm 100 percent OK with my sexuality. ... I wanted the opportunity to show them I love god and I'm gay and it's OK," Donohoe said.

D'Ambrosio explained that Donohoe was asked to step down because he no longer believed his sexuality was a sin and stopped actively working to overcome it, disregarding the Bible.

"The decision to ask Chris to step down was not that he did something wrong in having homosexual tendencies. [It was because] he no longer thought it was wrong. ... I support the decision fully," D'Ambrosio said.

A number of interesting things happening here. Note the comparison of homosexuality to doing drugs, drinking alcohol, and having premarital sex. Note the pastors' insistence that it wasn't because Donahoe had homosexual DESIRES, its because he had homosexual PRACTICES. Desire is okay, but action is not. But then the organization President says it's also not because he did something "wrong," but that he stopped believing what he was doing was wrong! So it's okay to have desires, and okay to practice, as long as you believe you're a sinner in the end. Sigh. Fucking religious wonks.

I am reminded here of a situation at UNC Chapel Hill when a Christian Fraternity -- Alpha Iota Omega -- refused to sign an anti-discrimination policy required of all student groups who received campus funds. They claimed religious discrimination, and then university eventually caved and revised the policy to allow religious and political organizations the right to discriminate.

I love you
By Jackson B. on April 23, 2009 10:30 PM | 1 Comment

When I first began transitioning from female to male, all the way back in 2000, one of the biggest struggles I had was figuring out how to be a man. Not a male, mind you, that part seemed to already be wired in, but a man, specifically the kind of man I revered; loyal, kind, generous, thoughtful.

There are some pretty strong scripts in our culture that lay out how men are supposed to act and I went to work trying them on for size. I didn't really feel I had a choice, I wasn't "passing" at the time, meaning most people who met me knew I was not born male, and acting out these masculine tropes was about the only thing I could do to signify to others that I was indeed male. (This experience is by no means exclusive to trans men, a lot of gay men, and a good amount of straight men also struggle to fit into these masculine molds.)

I was pretty miserable, everything that I tried felt put on, the posturing, the stance, the amount of space I tried to take up with my body and my presence, everything. I wished for the day when I no longer had to worry about whether people thought I was a man and only had to think about what kind of man I wanted to be.

Around this time I came across something that changed my life forever, a group of men who seemed to possess all the the qualities that I held so highly. These men were part of Perfect Harmony Chorus, a gay men's chorus in Madison, WI.

I fell in love, and not just with these men but with gay men in general. I was drawn to them not because I was having sex with men (that came later) but because they seemed to have found a way to free themselves from all the masculinity bullshit that I was struggling with. I was heartened because no matter how far they stepped outside of cultural norms (and some of the stepped pretty far) at the end of the day they were still men, and no one could question that.

That's what I wanted, to be able to live freely and genuinely, to show love and compassion for those around me, to be loyal, proud and kind and still be seen as a man.

Soon after I broke it off with my girlfriend, came out as a flaming homosexual, grabbed my shit and moved to San Francisco, and for a while my love for gay men still burned bright. Not surprisingly though it soon faded. Body image issues, a few broken hearts, public health's complete annihilation of any trust we had with our sex partners and a sprinkling of transphobia and my love affair with gay men was all but destroyed.

Well ladies, and gentlemen, I am happy to report that my love for gay men is back, if only for tonight. I just got home from an impromptu memorial for my friend Dan, who only just passed away this morning. In a few hours time the men who loved him most organized a memorial procession down Castro street, giving us all a place to grieve and say goodbye to a beloved member of our community. We stood together and loved each other, we kissed each other, we showed our loyalty for each other and for Dan. We held each other in compassion and thanked Dan for the generosity he showed all of us.

So tonight I want to say I love you to all the queers everywhere, but especially to my brothers, even the bitchy ones. There are systems and diseases and people everywhere that are trying to tear us apart from each other. Let's all try to remember what made us fall in love with this community in the first place, and hold on.

xo Jackson

Friend and activist Dan Cusick
By Jackson B. on April 23, 2009 5:06 PM | 1 Comment

Dan Cusick watches as Stephen Ritchings works outside the Castro Country Club. (Lacy Atkins / The Chronicle)

A good friend of mine, and of anyone in San Francisco who is involved in the clean and sober community, has passed away this morning of liver failure.

Dan Cusick was the facilities manager of the Castro Country Club, a clean and sober space in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood.

From the CCC website:

Located at 4058 18th Street, just off the world famous Castro in San Francisco, the Castro Country club is the oldest continuously operating coffee house in the neighborhood. Since 1983, it has been a place where people meet, hang out, and socialize in an alternative atmosphere to the bar scene...

The name, Castro Country Club, came about because there was once a small Astroturf-like putting green in the backyard, to give it that Country Club atmosphere. It was more for laughs then anything else. There was also a membership fee that was charged to help raise money to keep the Country Club going and give the member a sense of exclusivity. At the time the member paid his fee, he would have his picture taken. The member's name was then put on the picture, and the picture would be placed on the large wall in the entry hall. This was done so that anyone wanting to meet someone that he thought was cute or interesting could go to the wall and look that person's name up and then introduce himself.

When the AIDS epidemic hit, many of these members' pictures were eventually taken down and put into photo albums, which became the photo albums of the dead. At the height of the epidemic, the Country Club assisted members that had no health coverage by making them volunteers and putting them on the books and eventually their health care plan. This allowed those volunteers to get essential medical care.

As the volunteer base grew the atmosphere of the Club changed, yet again.

The development of AIDS medications prolonged peoples' lives; many in our community, as a result, became more health-concious. A lot of the members and volunteers became clean and sober and went to recovery meetings, and then would go to the Country Club after their meetings for fellowship and a cup of coffee...over time the Castro Country Club has come to be recognized as a "clean, sober and safe space" for socializing.

I run a drop-in space for queer youth, many of whom are homeless, un-employed and HIV positive, out of one of the rooms inside the Castro Country Club. This space wouldn't exist without the help, generosity and love of Dan Cusick.

I'll miss him very much.

Fascism in America: University of Michigan to Become "Smoke-Free"
By Trevor on April 23, 2009 12:48 PM | 2 Comments

There are two competing discourses in the field of American Public Health. You either, a) have total and full responsibility as an individual to make rational choices in your self-interest; or, b) you cannot be capable of making those choices, so the State needs to make them for you. Fast food scapegoating and regulation and anti-smoking legislation are emblematic of the second kind of Public Health fascism, while HIV policy almost exclusively sides with the notion of the rational sexual actor.

Well my University has caved to the fascist demands of Public Health wonks and decided to make the campus "smoke-free." This is allegedly to "reduce the risks of second-hand smoke and ensure a healthier environment." Fuck you. It's about caving to a national movement that is equating smoking with sinning and demonizing "smokers" -- almost a new identity category in this witchhunt. My last university (San Francisco State) became smokefree while I was there and started handing out $150 tickets to anyone caught on campus doing the deed. That's right, $150. Fucked up isn't even the word.

Of course, President Coleman assures us that she'll offer us smokers free patches and "behavioral sessions" to help kick the habit. Word to Coleman: We don't want to kick the habit -- mind your own goddamn business. Again, I'm reminded how similar the anti-smoking movement resembles evangelical anti-gay rhetoric. "Behavioral sessions." And see this earlier post here on how "disgust" at smoking truly resembles "disgust" at homosexuality.

Here's Coleman's announcement.

To the campus community:

In our ongoing effort to create an environment that is healthy for all members of our community, the University of Michigan will become a smoke-free university by July 1, 2011. This will help reduce the risks of second-hand smoke and ensure a healthier environment for faculty, staff, students and visitors.

Several years ago we committed to the MHealthy initiative to improve the health of our community. The decision to become smoke free is a logical and important extension of that commitment, and an expansion of existing practice. The U-M Health System became smoke free in 1998 and the interiors of on-campus buildings are currently smoke free.

This new policy will apply to all U-M campuses. We will be deliberative as we enact this change, with input from the campus community on how best to put our new policy into practice, ensuring that the needs of our University's varied constituents are understood. To help make this transition a successful one, I have appointed a Smoke Free University Steering Committee, to be co-chaired by Kenneth Warner, dean of the School of Public Health, and Robert Winfield, U-M chief health officer and director of the University Health Service.

The committee and its subcommittees - which will involve smokers, non-smokers and former smokers - will address issues of student life, human resources, communications, grounds and facilities, and venues for visitors to the University's campuses. I have asked the committee to submit its recommendations by September 2010.

As we move toward our 2011 goal of being smoke free, the University will offer free behavioral sessions and selected over-the-counter smoking cessation products to faculty and staff, along with co-pay reductions for prescription tobacco cessation medicines. The University Health Service will offer students behavioral counseling and discounts on tobacco cessation aids.

To learn more about plans for a smoke-free University, please visit http://www.smokefree.umich.edu. Also, if you have suggestions or comments about this policy, please share them at smokefreeuniversity@umich.edu.

I look forward to working with you to improve the health and physical wellbeing of our community.

Sincerely,

Mary Sue Coleman
President

Thanks Trevor!
By Jackson B. on April 23, 2009 12:17 AM | 2 Comments

Just want to say thanks for the warm welcome and a chance to add my thoughts to the discussion that is happening here.

Like Trevor said my areas of expertise are LGBT youth and transgender communities, but I also have a lot to say about gay men's health, class, gender and HIV/AIDS.

Thanks for this opportunity Trevor, can't wait to see who the other contributors will be!

Jackson

Introducing... Jackson!
By Trevor on April 22, 2009 8:10 PM | No Comments

So as promised, I'm happy to introduce the first in a series of new contributors to TrevorHoppe.com! First off is my dear friend Jackson Bowman, who hails from San Francisco and does fabulous work there as an activist working with LGBT youth and transgender communities. He's working as a researcher for UCSF at the moment, and he wanted me to add that he "bakes a mean cake." And indeed he does, as he was for many years a professional chef. Which would pay off more for everyone if he actually cooked more often for his friends. *cough*. Just saying.

In any case, Jackson will be throwing his two cents in here from time to time. Show him some love!

Coming Soon: Contributors
By Trevor on April 22, 2009 12:54 AM | No Comments

So it's final exam week and I'm in my proverbial cave. Of course my laptop picked this week to completely tank on me. Had to go out and buy a new one today. Sigh. What a headache. Three papers down. Two more to go. Then a final exam. Plus 150 papers to grade. Jesus.

But I digress. What I'm really writing to flirt about is the fact that very soon I'll be announcing several regular contributors to this here blog! I'm so excited! They're all really smart, sexy, and fabulous writers, activists, and thinkers. I think it will add some serious depth to the conversations we're having here. Get ready folks!

xoxo

Trevor

Recuperating "Heteronormativity": It's Not *Just* About Heterosexuals!
By Trevor on April 20, 2009 12:19 AM | 2 Comments

If you've ever taken a class on "Queer Theory," you've no doubt been introduced to Michael Warner's now-ubiquitous concept of "heteronormativity." It's an oft-cited term that I think often gets misinterpreted and misconstrued, so I wanted to take a moment here to attempt to recuperate the term from the hands of some academics and activists who have lazily misinterpreted it to mean something much less interesting than it was intended.

Let's begin by laying out what I think is the meaning of the term that I understand Michael Warner to have intended, and the meaning by which I see it often misused:

1) The Original Definition: Basically, Warner was attempting to theorize the set of power relations through which sexuality becomes normalized and regimented in our culture -- and how idealized heterosexual relations become institutionalized and equated with what it means to be human. It's not just intended to describe how gays and lesbians are marginalized, but how monogamy becomes inscribed as the dominant mode of socio-sexual relations. It's normalized sexuality.

2) The Misinterpretation: Because "hetero" is the prefix he uses, many folks simply read Warner as describing the ways in which heterosexuality is privileged over same-sex relations. I understand this to be "heterosexism" -- not heteronormativity.

While it may appear to be a rather trivial point, I think misinterpreting heteronormativity as heterosexism proves to foreclose a much more interesting analysis and politics that might stem from Warner's original conceptualization. In the original sense, it doesn't just implicate prejudice against homosexuality, but also the enormous set of social pressures that serve to construct idealized sexuality. This includes not just sexual-object choice (gay versus straight), but also race, class, gender, and sexual practices.

To help illustrate this, let's return to Michael Warner's "Introduction" to the 1993 anthology, Fear of a Queer Planet where he first coined the term. In this text, the bulk of his analysis rests on a "reading" of Carl Sagan's diagram presented to NASA to be etched onto the side of the satellite Pioneer 10. Here I've provided that very diagram so you can follow his analysis:

So let's now turn to Warner:

Continue reading Recuperating "Heteronormativity": It's Not *Just* About Heterosexuals!. Frank Rich Mocks "A Storm is Gathering"
By Trevor on April 19, 2009 2:49 PM | No Comments

"WHAT would happen if you crossed that creepy 1960s horror classic 'The Village of the Damned' with the Broadway staple 'A Chorus Line'?" That's how Frank Rich begins his column today for The New York Times, an incisive critique of that ridiculous homophobic anti-marriage ad campaign. Here's some more deliciousness:

Far from terrifying anyone, "Gathering Storm" has become, unsurprisingly, an Internet camp classic. On YouTube the original video must compete with countless homemade parodies it has inspired since first turning up some 10 days ago. None may top Stephen Colbert's on Thursday night, in which lightning from "the homo storm" strikes an Arkansas teacher, turning him gay. A "New Jersey pastor" whose church has been "turned into an Abercrombie & Fitch" declares that he likes gay people, "but only as hilarious best friends in TV and movies."

Yet easy to mock as "Gathering Storm" may be, it nonetheless bookmarks a historic turning point in the demise of America's anti-gay movement.

What gives the ad its symbolic significance is not just that it's idiotic but that its release was the only loud protest anywhere in America to the news that same-sex marriage had been legalized in Iowa and Vermont. If it advances any message, it's mainly that homophobic activism is ever more depopulated and isolated as well as brain-dead.

"Gathering Storm" was produced and broadcast -- for a claimed $1.5 million -- by an outfit called the National Organization for Marriage. This "national organization," formed in 2007, is a fund-raising and propaganda-spewing Web site fronted by the right-wing Princeton University professor Robert George and the columnist Maggie Gallagher, who was famously caught receiving taxpayers' money to promote Bush administration "marriage initiatives." Until last month, half of the six board members (including George) had some past or present affiliation with Princeton's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. (One of them, the son of one of the 12 apostles in the Mormon church hierarchy, recently stepped down.)

(Hat tip: JMG)

US Boycotts UN Anti-Racism Conference (And Other Thoughts on Israel)
By Trevor on April 19, 2009 11:57 AM | No Comments

Joining a host of other countries that have decided to bocott the event due to alleged fears that the conference's planning documents are offensive to Israel, the US announced that it too will not attend the UN's upcoming conference on racism -- capitulating to Israel's outrageous demands. The conference is slated to "review" the 2001 Durban "World Conference Against Racism." I presume everyone's in a tizzy over part of that conference's "Programme of Action", in which they declare Palestine's right to self-determination:

63. We are concerned about the plight of the Palestinian people under foreign occupation. We recognize the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to the establishment of an independent State and we recognize the right to security for all States in the region, including Israel, and call upon all States to support the peace process and bring it to an early conclusion;

The US also joined Israel in a walkout of this 2001 conference. This is the problem with the US' perverse relationship with Israel: it stands beside it even in Israel's most blatantly Zionist moments. It seems that any statement advocating self-determination for Palestine can be construed under this rubric as anti-Semitic, which demonstrates how deeply problematic this kind of rhetoric is for politics. It can only work under a theocratic Byzantine view of the state in which a threat to national sovereignty is concurrently a threat to religion. But it doesn't just stop there, it uses the highly politicized vocabulary of "anti-Semitic" to cushion the impact of critics, and to manipulate through rhetoric their attacks into bigotry. This isn't just heinously fucked up, but it also erodes the power of future uses of "anti-Semitic" to actually refer to prejudice against Jewish people.

Saying that Palestine deserves self-determination is not and cannot on its face be rendered anti-Semitic, and arguing that it is is zealous religious-nationalism. Israel is wrong on this, and using religion as a rationale for their occupation of Palestine is disgusting and must end. It's no different than Christians embarking to "recapture" Jerusalem under the banner of the Crusades. It's political occupation of a people justified by religion, and it cannot be tolerated.

Fraudulent HIV Group Harrassment
By Trevor on April 18, 2009 11:23 AM | No Comments

Several weeks ago I reported on the California-based "Center for AIDS Prevention" fraudulently seeking donations via ads on The New York Times' website. To catch you up to speed: Nobody's heard of the organization; there's no evidence they provide any services; and they appear to be affiliated with a now-defunct company that advertised an herbal remedy for HIV. ProPublica helped break the story last month, and followed up by noting that they were advertising on USA Today's website as well.

Well color me surprised earlier this week when I answered my phone only to be greeted by an alleged representative of this organization -- "D Lomax Burnett" -- complaining that my use of their "property" in the form of their logo in my last post constituted theft and that they would be filing lawsuit against me in four days unless I took down the material.

He followed up with this e-mail later that day, which included a screenshot of that lost post:

Dear Mr. Hoppe,

I placed a call to you earlier today and asked that you remove the images you created using our logo from your website and/or blog. Our logo is not your property and you have not been give permission to use it or any of our other intellectual property. We ask that you cease and desist from your use of our property. Our legal team is aware of this matter and we are asking that you comply with our request immediately.

Sincerely,

D. Lomax Burnett
Director of Fundraising and Outreach

If this isn't further evidence of their shady dealings and the need to fight to see this organization's further investigation, I don't know what is.

Internet Panic
By Trevor on April 18, 2009 1:30 AM | No Comments | 1 TrackBack

This is CNN's lead article tonight -- concerning the potential link between Craigslist and the murder of Julissa Brisman of Boston. Brisman met her clients as a massage therapist on the popular website. Of course this is a tragic incident, but I want to point out the ways in which the media spins a certain fear and panic into our hearts by attempting to link the murder to Craigslist. After all, this isn't the lead article on CNN for any old reason -- it's the lead article because it successfully links a popular sense of moral decay vis-a-vis the Internet to a brutal murder.

It would be hard to imagine this story gaining similar ground, say, if the victim met her attacker via a newspaper ad for massage services. Or at a bar. Or anywhere where there isn't the same fodder for moral panic. But she met him online, and that proves to work especially well in tandem with a moral panic about the Internet's power to bring society to new levels of depravity. The murder's lurid details (she's a "massage therapist", after all) just add to the story's message of moral decay, depravity, and social demise. It's a tragic murder -- and my heart goes out to Brisman and her family and friends -- but we need to be critical on how stories like this get used to posture a social message in the media that ultimately buttress a conservative anti-sex, anti-technology panic.

On the Perils of Sleep-Tanning
By Trevor on April 17, 2009 7:17 PM | No Comments

That's one pretty amazing tanline Kim Kardashian's sporting. She apparently fell asleep while wearing sunglasses. Ouch!

Ch-Ch-Changes!
By Trevor on April 17, 2009 6:25 PM | 2 Comments

Phew. I've been hard at work overhauling this here blog to a new design and to a new engine: Movable Type 4.25. It's an exciting upgrade, not just because the site looks slicker, but because the features that come bundled in with MT4.25 are impressive. I'm now requiring everyone to sign in to comment here, but you have options. You can sign in through a number of pathways -- including making your own profile here at TrevorHoppe.com; Logging in via Facebook (yea!); OpenID; Yahoo; AIM; Vox; Livejournal; and maybe one or two other services. Cool!

There are more features I'll be exploiting over the next few weeks. For now, Archives are disabled as I can't get their archive scripts to function how I want them to. "Contact Me" is also not functional, as I'm working on getting a contact form generated.

But other than these issues, the site is pretty much a go! Search works fine. Comments are functional. The site looks sexy. Good stuff! Please do let me know if you run into any issues, and I'll see what I can do remedy any problems that arise on this new platform. I hope you like the changes!

xoxo

Trevor

"My God, If I Would Have Seen His Picture Earlier, I Would've Been an Essentialist!"
By Trevor on April 16, 2009 5:02 PM | No Comments

My friend Rostom, speaking of the pioneering gay historian, John Boswell pictured above. What a handsome devil!

My Book Reviews Published!
By Trevor on April 16, 2009 4:20 PM | 4 Comments

My dual book review of The Health of Sexual Minorities and Sexual Inequalities and Social Justice has been published in the journal, Culture, Health, and Sexuality! You can find it here if you have access to journal articles. If not, here are some choice quotes -- translated wonderfully into British English:

Perhaps the collection's most forward-thinking section, titled 'LGBT Health and the State', includes a series of essays on activism, social justice and legal issues facing sexual minorities. In 'The Importance of Being Perverse: Troubling Law, Identities, Health and Rights, in Search of Global Justice', legal scholars Stefano Fabeni and Alice M. Miller argue that 'policy makers and practitioners concerned with sexual health or with the health of persons of diverse sexualities can and should be part of a global struggle for justice and rights' (p. 93). Rather than rallying for social change under the banner of 'freedom' or 'equality', social justice movements globally are increasingly turning to health within an international human rights framework to organise their arguments. This is in part due to a realisation that foundations and government agencies are much more likely to be interested in funding HIVprevention programs than, say, a campaign to end homophobia (although the two may have similar ends). As such, this section's essays are timely and useful for understanding this shift in organising.

And:

Ironically, numerous articles throughout The Health of Sexual Minorities are focused on the very negative outcomes that Savin-Williams describes for LGBT youth. A cursory read of the book's included articlesmight leave an unfamiliar reader thinking that lesbians have high rates of breast cancer; Latino gay men are addicted to methamphetamine; LGBT people are alcoholics and heavy smokers; and of course, many men who have sex with men are having unprotected sex and contracting HIV (particularly men of colour). This is not to say that any of these things is particularly inaccurate, per se. Rather, it seems that getting public health research funded and published requires reporting the worst evidence possible from minority populations. Public health officials and scholars are continually allowed to denigrate and scold minority groups for their bad habits, while rarely (if ever) reporting on any of the positive potential health outcomes from being gay (or, for that matter, the negative health outcomes from being heterosexual). The same could be said for public health scholarship on race and/or gender. This perspective has unfortunately been buttressed by some scholars of 'queer theory' who have insisted on painting 'gay' and 'lesbian' identities as dangerous and backwards.ave

Enjoy!

I Dreamed a Dream
By Trevor on April 15, 2009 10:35 PM | No Comments

I dreamed a dream from Darian on Vimeo.

All of Britain is a flutter about Susan Boyle, the suprise contestant on Britain's Got Talent I love a good Showtunes queen! She's a trip. Pretty fabulous.

The Smartest Thing I've Read All Week: Social vs. Cultural Constructionism
By Trevor on April 14, 2009 8:43 PM | 2 Comments | 1 TrackBack

A brilliant sociological critique of Foucault and Butler (or at least the way they are commonly taken up), from Stevi Jackson's 2005 Piece, "Sexuality, Heterosexuality, and Gender Hierarchy" (from the collection, Thinking Straight: New Work in Critical Heterosexuality Studies):

It is sometimes assumed that the more radically antiessentialist positions, those that hold that there is no essential pre-given basis for either gender or sexuality, derive from postmodern theorizing. This misconception results in the erasure of earlier sociological accounts of the construction of sexuality" and the first feminist critiques of sex-gender distinction." Newer forms of social constructionism, which take such writers as Foucault and Butler as originators, are often not very social at all. Indeed, they are often emptied of the social and are better characterized as cultural constructionism. Of course the social world includes the cultural, it includes the realms of discourse and symbolic representation, but the cultural is not all there is to the social. The distinctively social has to do with questions of social structure but also situated social practices. It is concerned with meaning, both at the level of our wider culture and as meanings emerge from or are deployed within everyday social interaction. It includes subjectivity since our sense of who we are in relation to others constantly guides our actions and interactions and, conversely, who we are is a consequence of our location within gendered, class, racial and other divisions, and the immediate social and cultural milieux we inhabit.

In my recent work I have, in keeping with this picture of the social, identified four intersecting levelsor facets of social construction:14 (1) the structural, in which gender is constructed as a hierarchical social division and heterosexuality is institutionalized, for example, by marriage, the law, and the state; (2) the level of meaning, encompassing the discursive construction of gender and sexuality and the meanings negotiated in everyday social interaction; (3) the level of routine, everyday social practices through which gender and sexuality are constantly constituted and reconstituted within localized contexts and relationships; and (4) at the level of subjectivity through which we experience desires and emotions and make sense of ourselves as embodied gendered and sexual beings.

What cultural-as opposed to social-constructionism does is to exclude the first level, that of structure, altogether. It then deals with meaning primarily at the level of culture and discourse, but ignores the meanings emergent from and deployed within everyday social interaction. Sometimes practices are included - as in Butler's (1990) discussion of performativity - but rarely are these practices located in their interactional or wider social setting. Finally, subjectivity is usually theorized through psychoanalysis, which completely abstracts it from its social context; alternative perspectives linking the self and the social are rarely even considered.

What I am suggesting is that an understanding of gender and sexuality as fully social, as contingent upon the material conditions of our existence, must take account of all these processes through which they are constructed. I am not proposing here some total theory of social construction wherein all these levels are welded together as a seamless whole. Such an endeavor would be ill advised and likely to produce another form of reductionism. Moreover, it is difficult, if not impossible, to focus on all these levels
at once. We do, however, need to be aware that when we concentrate on one facet of social construction, we have only a partial view of a multifaceted
process.

Glorious.

It's Update Season!
By Trevor on April 14, 2009 3:43 AM | 1 Comment

As you can see, the regular site look is presently taking a break as I upgrade the system to Movable Type 4.25 and overhaul the templates. This is no small task, and make a take a few days. Here's what I hope it will look like:

Amazon's Homophobic Censorship
By Trevor on April 12, 2009 8:47 PM | No Comments

If you read any gay blog, you're bound to have heard that Amazon.com has stripped the vast majority of LGBT-related books of their sales rankings. Here's the story from author Craig Seymour, who has been complaining since February about this issue. (Incidentally, I'll have a review of his book up soon -- I just finished reading it. In the meantime, buy it -- it's wonderful -- but not from Amazon!!!):

In the last couple of days, people have been blogging about how Amazon has been labeling gay and lesbian books as "adult" and removing the books from their search engine. I'm glad the issue is FINALLY getting attention (see links below), because I have been complaining about it since February.

Here's my story: I'm the author of a memoir, All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C. (Atria/Simon & Schuster), which is about my journey from grad student to stripper to entertainment journalist to college professor. (I'm currently Associate Professor of Journalism at Northern Illinois University.) Like many authors, I frequently check my sales status on Amazon, so imagine my shock, back in early February when the "Amazon.com Sales Rank" completely disappeared from the Product Details of my book. The book also disappeared from the search listings, so that if a customer looked up "All I Could Bare by Craig Seymour" on the Amazon home page, nothing came up.

Of course, I immediately sent emails to Amazon asking about this situation. I also placed several phone calls. But I could never get a straight answer, until February 25, when I received an email stating that "the sales rank was not displayed for the following reasons: The ISBN #1416542051 was classified as an Adult product."

The LA Times has picked it up. For instance, of the 20 or so Queer Studies books sitting on my coffee table, here are some of the texts that have been stripped of their rankings:

Michael Warner's, "The Trouble with Normal"
Michael Warner's edited collection, "Fear of a Queer Planet"
Michel Foucault's "History of Sexuality: Volume One" (Curiously, not volumes two or three)
Steven Seidman's edited collection, "Queer Theory / Sociology"
David Halperin's "What Do Gay Men Want?"
Heather Love's "Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer Politics"
D'Emilio and Freedman's "Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America"
Allan Berube's "Coming Out Under Fire"
Kennedy and Davis' "Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold."

As Craig also notes:

Memoirs by gay porn stars Blue Blake (Out of the Blue: Confessions of an Unlikely Porn Star) and Bobby Blake (My Life in Porn: The Bobby Blake Story) didn't have a sales ranking, but memoirs by straight porn stars Ron Jeremy (Ron Jeremy: The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz) and Jenna Jameson (How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale) did. Clearly, there seemed to be a double-standard.

Just a few examples. Based on this evidence. I advise three things:

1. Sign the petition opposing this policy.
2. Contact Amazon and demand they repeal the policy.
3. Boycott Amazon.com until they repeal this blatantly homophobic censorship policy.

Radical Sex vs. Progressive: Ideas?
By Trevor on April 11, 2009 7:15 PM | No Comments

I've been talking a lot lately with friends about the inherent tensions between radical sex theorists (namely, Gayle Rubin and Pat Califia) and progressive theories of justice. While radical sex theory is highly anti-interventionist and has streaks of libertarianism, "progressive" (which is a highly vacuous and unstable category, admittedly) politics has tended to favor state intervention. How are these two approaches to be reconciled? Similarly, in the wake of deconstructive efforts by postmodern and poststructuralist theorists (particularly for my needs, queer theorists), how do we develop a concept of Ethics and Justice? Is it possible? Anyone have suggested readings in this realm?

What's New in Gay Sex?: "Natural"
By Trevor on April 11, 2009 12:06 PM | 2 Comments

I think we need to pause and seriously consider the proliferation of "natural" all over gay sex websites. There are many different connotations to this word that need to be dissected:

1) The most obvious -- bareback. What does it mean that "natural" is being equated with sex without condoms? Particularly in the face of a religious rhetoric that pits anal sex between men as "unnatural"? Is this a point of resistance? To whom? Public Health? Fundies? In either case, men are proclaiming not just a desire for sex without condoms, but using this framing to justify unprotected sex as fundamentally BETTER than sex with condoms -- and framing sex with condoms as pathetic / unnatural / gross / less desirable / boring / etc. We need to seriously take stock here.

2) Concurrent with the sex without condoms framing has been a rise of "natural" used by men to refer to their masculinity. Actually, to be more precise I think it's most often in reference to their amount of body hair (and lack of trimming practices) -- but it also may reference their lack of general "primping". No cologne, no deodorant, etc. The claim is often made that by not engaging in these practices, they present a kind of masculinity that is "natural." What makes me uncomfortable about this claim is not just that these guys have different kinds of self-styling practices. That's wonderful and I totally support that. But many guys who present this kind of self aren't just claiming that their practices are sexy -- but that "natural" masculinity is BETTER than / the RIGHT way to be a man. And they're of course setting it against the backdrop of the clean-shaven, twink faggot. Indeed, many times MAN is in all-caps in these ads, suggesting that a person with a penis is not sufficient -- you must meet their qualifications for an all-caps MAN. I think this is disgustingly masculinist and something we need to not just resist, but outright attack. After all, what they're really up to here is denigrating sissy guys and telling us faggots who shave that we're not good enough for their manly cocks. They're doing to us what straight guys did in high school: making us feel less valuable, unworthy, and "unnatural." Being hairy and not wearing deodorant is great, guys. But please, that doesn't make you more of a man or a better person. Understanding that is critical.

Just a few thoughts for the day!

My LGBTI Health Summit Proposals
By Trevor on April 10, 2009 10:50 AM | 1 Comment

Yesterday I submitted three workshop proposals to the LGBTI Health Summit team! Let's hope for the best! Here they are:

UPDATE: Erik reminded me that -- oh yea -- we also submitted a "Bottom Monologues" proposal. It's added below now!

Title: Circuits of Power, Circuits of Pleasure: Sexual Scripting in Gay Men's Bottom Narratives
Presenters: Trevor Hoppe

Public health scholarship on same-sex male sexualities has tended to focus on the acultural category of "men who have sex with men," and their abilities (or lack thereof) to make rational decisions to prevent HIV transmission. But what about identity? In abandoning the use of identity categories as sites of inquiry, I argue that Public Health has evacuated a critical site of social meaning from their research. This presentation explores the meanings gay male participants attributed to their identity as "bottom." Based on focus group and interview data with 18 HIV-negative self-identified gay male bottoms living in San Francisco, this paper explores two dominant “sexual scripts” attributed to bottoms: first, that bottoms are men who desire to produce pleasure for their partners; and second, that bottoms are men who desire to submit sexually to their partners. I will conclude with a discussion concerning a minority of participants for whom these pleasure/power scripts for bottoms conflicted directly with public health scripts concerning safer sex behavior -- what I term "pleasure/risk dilemmas."

Title: P-Values, Regressions, and Correlations, Oh My!: How to Read, Interpret, and Critique Scientific Research on LGBT Populations
Presenters: Trevor Hoppe & Jason Mitchell

Our newspapers are filled with new reports on scientific studies that claim to have discovered something new about LGBT people’s health. Gay men are spreading MRSA. Lesbians are more likely to get breast cancer. LGBT teenagers are suicidal. But rarely do newspaper reports interrogate or reflect critically on the science behind these claims, and too often they misrepresent or overstate the researchers’ findings. In this interactive “how to” workshop, two Gay Men’s Health scholars will present first an overview of typical research methods and their potential pitfalls, as well as a glossary of the often confusing terms used to report new findings. Participants will then split up into small groups to analyze and critique some recent LGBT health journal articles.

Title: Destroying Public Health for the Good of LGBT Health: Critique. Alternatives. Discussion.
Presenters: Trevor Hoppe & Bill Jesdale

In the words of the late civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired." We are desperately need in a radical restructuring of Public Health, the kind of change that rejects and reformulates the very basic assumptions that underlie the way Public Health frames the social world. What are those assumptions, and how do we want them to change? And when the dust settles, after we have successfully destroyed Public Health as we know it, what do we want to be left? In this workshop, Gay Men's Health activist-researchers Trevor Hoppe and Bill Jesdale will briefly present their critique of Public Health and methods for resistance, leaving the bulk of the time to facilitate a discussion on the pain inflicted on LGBT people by Public Health and how we might envision its reshaping to our needs. Various viewpoints are welcome, but we will begin with one key assumption: Public Health as we know it needs to go. Now.

Title:Tales from the Backside: Bringing “The Bottom Monologues” to Life
Presenters: Trevor Hoppe & Erik Libey

Inspired by conversations and work presented at the 2008 National Gay Men’s Health Summit in Seattle, “The Bottom Monologues” is a play, in the spirit of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues,” that will use the narratives of gay/bi/trans/queer men to explore the complexities of bottom identity. This workshop will give a brief overview of the development of the project, which is still in progress…and then offer participants a “sneak peek” of the show through a dramatic reading of excerpts from the draft script. Participants will then have an opportunity to share their own reactions and thoughts through a facilitated exploration of questions that will touch on issues like stigma, choices, power & identity. Join us for this entertaining and interactive session as we address our core question: What does it really mean to be a bottom?

How to Host A Circlejerk Party
By Trevor on April 10, 2009 10:36 AM | No Comments

God bless middle. He has a lovely post over at Lifelube with tips for those of you out there who might be interested in holding a masturbation party. My favorite tip:

Since everyone may not desire to or be able to reach a climax, knowing when to bring the masturbation phase of the circle to a close can be tricky. We ask our fellow masturbators to signify when they are finished by ritually choosing a piece of fruit and taking a bite. The group doesn’t move on until all have done so.

Read the rest here!

"Protect Your Valuables" Quebec Condom Campaign
By Trevor on April 10, 2009 9:42 AM | No Comments

Pretty funny stuff via Lifelube:

That one brings a hearty laugh, and it's queer through-and-through. I like it!

Transcript: Thom Hartmann vs. NOM's Brian Brown
By Trevor on April 10, 2009 9:13 AM | 4 Comments

Radio host Thom Hartmann had the Executive Director of the homophobic National Organization for Marriage (those responsible for that creepy ad campaign) on his show, and the result was a pretty darn good debate -- despite a few missteps. Notably, the FLDS do not endorse polygamy, and I think it's unfair and unjust to make them out to be scapegoats in the argument Thom's making. But in the main, this is a great illustration of how to devastate a the classical homophobic argument that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Here's the transcript, via PHB:

Thom Hartmann: Welcome back to the second hour of our show. Thom Hartmann here with us -- with you. And Brian Brown is with us. He is the executive director of the National Organization for Marriage. NOM.org is their website. And their California version is NOMCalifornia.org. And leading the charge in favor of Proposition 8 and uh -- and in uh -- in opposition, I would say, correct me if I'm wrong, to uh -- in the hopes that the court will not grant gays the right to marry in the state of California. Do I have that right, Brian?

Brian Brown: Right, uh. We want the people's vote to -- to stand and be counted and we're confident that's going to happen.

Thom Hartmann: Okay. As, uh. You know, over on your website, you have a list of frequently asked questions and answers and um... One of the questions is that -- that you put out is, uh "Are you a bigot? Why do you want to take people's rights?" And uh, y'know, your answer to that is essentially uh -- well, I'll let you give the answer.

Brian Brown: Well, we hear this question time and again when people stand up and say they -- they understand that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. Well, y'know (?) immediate response from those that want to redefine marriage, "well, that's just bigoted". But, uh. Y'know. We -- We need to take this argument seriously. If... the entire history of California... and of this country's understanding of marriage is bigoted, what does that mean? Well, it means that, alright, the majority in California -- uh, if we take this too seri- seriously (cough cough), is the power of the law would be used to suppress, marginalize, and punish the majority that understands what marriage is -- so we shouldn't see- be surprised when we see the rights of those of us that believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman attacked and underlined (?) in states that move in the direction of same-sex marriage.

Thom Hartmann: No, I understand. I absolutely understand. Y'know, I think that when the majority of us believed that it was perfectly appropriate that African Americans be slaves. And we had laws to that effect and we voted on that, even wrote it into the constitution, and uh, that -- that was the right thing, right?

Brian Brown: Well, your history's just plain wrong. What we did was we wrote into the constitution, uh, the fourteenth amendment, which -- which ended up freeing the slaves --

Thom Hartmann: Uh, that got writ into the constitution, sir, a hundred years after the constitution was written.

Brian Brown: The fact of the matter is... that the African American community is tired. And many of us are tired at the -- of these false comparisons- Thom Hartmann: Are you African American, Brian Brown?

Brian Brown: No, I'm not. But the fact of the matter is that --

Thom Hartmann: You -- You're speaking for an entire community?

Brian Brown: ...seventy percent of African Americans in the exit (?) polling supported Proposition 8. Many of the people that worked to pass Proposition 8, stood up, and were leaders in their churches: African American, Hispanic Churches -- people who have suffered -- suffered under the... the... the... the evils of uh... uh... uh... the... the priests of a Rights era. They stood up and said, "Enough is enough."

Thom Hartmann: So you're saying that the justification of your bigotry is that within the African American community, there are also bigots?

Brian Brown: (Stammers) That's absolutely absurd. It is NOT bigotry to believe in this simple, plain idea that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. And again, when you're say that (sic) -- when you start using that -- that hammer on those of us that believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, don't be surprised when the state of Massachussets, for example, forces Catholic charities out of adopting uh, children because its religious beliefs say that it can't adopt children to same-sex children so the state comes in and says, "Well, your- your very religion is bigoted and that's why you cannot do the good that you're doing anymore-"

Continue reading Transcript: Thom Hartmann vs. NOM's Brian Brown. Homophobic Ad Campaign: "A Storm is Gathering"
By Trevor on April 8, 2009 10:48 AM | 2 Comments | 1 TrackBack

Via JMG, the misnamed "National Organization for Marriage's" new ad campaign:

I wonder if real Americans will actually respond to this outrageously melodramatic ad spot? "A Storm is Gathering"? A bit too fire and brimstone for most of us, I think.

The American Idol Everygay's Blogging About
By Trevor on April 8, 2009 10:42 AM | 1 Comment

Everybody's crazy for gayface Adam Lambert. He's certainly got a beautiful voice, and a kind of emo-twink-jock appeal that makes me a bit weak. Delicious! I don't watch Idol, but I think I'd probably like to hear more of Lambert's voice in my future. So if you do watch, give the gay a vote!

P.S.: He's not openly gay, but he might as well be. "Sports, not so much" in above clip. Or this series of clips to demonstrate it.

When Will Marriage Bans Fail?
By Trevor on April 8, 2009 10:30 AM | 1 Comment

Statistics wizard Nate Silver has crunched his magical numbers and predicted when same-sex marriage bans will crumble in every state. He came up with the numbers like this:

It turns out that you can build a very effective model by including just three variables:

1. The year in which the amendment was voted upon;
2. The percentage of adults in 2008 Gallup tracking surveys who said that religion was an important part of their daily lives;
3. The percentage of white evangelicals in the state.

These variables collectively account for about three-quarters of the variance in the performance of marriage bans in different states. The model predicts, for example, that a marriage ban in California in 2008 would have passed with 52.1 percent of the vote, almost exactly the fraction actually received by Proposition 8.

Unsurprisingly, there is a very strong correspondence between the religiosity of a state and its propensity to ban gay marriage, with a particular "bonus" effect depending on the number of white evangelicals in the state.

Marriage bans, however, are losing ground at a rate of slightly less than 2 points per year. So, for example, we'd project that a state in which a marriage ban passed with 60 percent of the vote last year would only have 58 percent of its voters approve the ban this year.

I'm not sold -- he pegs North Carolina as not crumbling until 2019, but my experiences there tell me this state is moving on gay issues at a surprisingly fast pace. Perhaps a more useful read on this data may just be generally a scale of likelihood over the coming years, rather than taking these dates at face value.

(Via JMG)

THIS Was All They Could Come Up With? White House Releases New HIV Campaign
By Trevor on April 8, 2009 10:15 AM | 1 Comment

The CDC announced Tuesday their first national HIV communication campaign in almost 20 years. And this "Every 9 1/2 minutes" totally uninteresting, trite, and utterly boring campaign was all they could come up with? As Lifelube notes, the campaign's website mentions very little about the gays, and of course gives a shout out to abstinence (sigh). As Jim also notes, this is the first half of the campaign, with a probably more targeted second phase to come.

But still: "Every Nine and a Half Minutes"? This is the problem with those sanitized public health-heads. They can only imagine to think in bland statistics, with no real meaning or lived experience reflected in their cold, calculating numbers. It's all about probabilities, correlations, and p-values. Anyone actually dealing with the possibility of becoming HIV-positive can't relate to this tripe. They're better off putting their $45 million towards housing for HIV-positive people or treatment.

In short, my message back to the CDC is clear: EARTH TO PUBLIC HEALTH! TALK ABOUT SEX! OR REAL PEOPLE! OR OUR EXPERIENCES! OR SOMETHING THAT MATTERS!!!!!!!!!!!

Jesus H Christ. This crap just pissed me off more than I can express. You can find the campaign website here. Here's the 411 via Out in America:

Every 9 ½ minutes another person in America becomes infected with HIV. Officials from the White House, Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced today a new five-year national communication campaign, Act Against AIDS, which highlights this alarming statistic and aims to combat complacency about the HIV/AIDS crisis in the United States.

[snip]

“Act Against AIDS seeks to put the HIV crisis back on the national radar screen,” said Melody Barnes, Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. “Our goal is to remind Americans that HIV/AIDS continues to pose a serious health threat in the United States and encourage them to get the facts they need to take action for themselves and their communities.”

The campaign will feature public service announcements (PSAs) and online communications, as well as targeted messages and outreach to the populations most severely affected by HIV/AIDS, beginning with African-Americans, with subsequent phases focusing on Latinos and other communities disproportionately impacted.

To help achieve widespread use of the campaign messages within African-American communities, the Obama Administration also announced today the Act Against AIDS Leadership Initiative (AAALI), a partnership with 14 of the nation’s leading African-American civic organizations to integrate HIV prevention into each organization’s outreach programs.

A Few Items...
By Trevor on April 8, 2009 9:07 AM | No Comments

Andrew Sullivan considers why The Right's blogosphere has been relatively quiet about Vermont's democratic move to install same-sex marriage...

The NY Times reflects on Iowa and Vermont's newfound same-sex marriage rights, and looks to the future of marriage equality...

Gay porn icon Jack Wrangler is dead.

CNN covers the trend towards locking teenagers away for life in prison without parole...

Pam Spaulding recounts her experience at Equality North Carolina's Day of Actiong (their annual LGBT lobby day) with Mandy Carter, and I sigh and miss my home...

A new DNA test is much better at finding advanced cervical cancer than the traditional pap smear...

A new ad campaign bets that gay men are the key to reviving NYC's ailing tourism industry...

And that's all for this morning! Off to the gym, and then lunch with the lovely Heather Love, who's visiting Michigan from Penn to do a few lectures on her new project interrogating Erving Goffman's 1963 classic study, Stigma. She's helping us think about the development of a conference for 2010 or 2011 on the 20th anniversary of queer theory.

On the Perils of Spellcheck...
By Trevor on April 7, 2009 12:04 PM | No Comments

A fellow Sociology grad posted this amusing story on the perils of relying on Microsoft Word's spell-check to solve your problems:

One edition of the Brigham Young University student newspaper has been pulled from newsstands because of a typo in a caption that referred to Mormon leaders as apostates instead of apostles.

An apostate is someone who has abandoned religious faith.

A photo in Monday's Daily Universe showed members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a governing body of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns the university.

The caption called the group the ''Quorum of the Twelve Apostates.''

University spokeswoman Carri Jenkins says it was an honest mistake that happened when an editor was doing a computerized spell check.

Most copies of the press run of 18,000 were picked up. A corrected version was distributed later Monday.

Amazing.

Marriage Drama! Vermont Overrides Veto! Iowa Senate Leader Refuses to Co-Sponsor Anti-Gay Bill!
By Trevor on April 7, 2009 11:55 AM | No Comments

Drama, drama, drama! Vermont's legislature has voted to override the Governor's veto of a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, making Vermont the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage -- and the first to do so via legislative initiative. Here's the details from the NY Times:

The Legislature voted Tuesday to override Gov. Jim Douglas' veto of a bill allowing gays and lesbians to marry. The vote was 23-5 to override in the state Senate and 100-49 to override in the House. Under Vermont law, two-thirds of each chamber had to vote for override.

The vote came nine years after Vermont adopted its first-in-the-nation civil unions law.

It's now the fourth state to permit same-sex marriage. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa are the others. Their approval of gay marriage came from the courts.

In other news, the Iowa Senate Majority Leader, Mike Gronstal, had some amazing things to say in his very public refusal to co-sponsor a bill that would amend the Constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage. Just listen!

Jeebus! What a day!

My Weekend in Moving Photos
By Trevor on April 6, 2009 8:00 PM | 1 Comment

My friend Pedro recorded this photo essay RE: our trip this weekend to the Lake to celebrate our dear friend Maxime's birthday. It's pretty amazing.

The Most Ridiculous French Song Ever
By Trevor on April 6, 2009 4:34 PM | No Comments

My friend Maxime has introduced me to the outrageous work of French singer Serge Gainsbourg, who's 1984 video for "Love on the Beat" features ridiculous gruntings and ecstatic cries from his supposed sex partner (he's also famous for the duet he did with his daughter in which they sang lewdly about their theoretical incestuous encounter). It's pretty amazing stuff. The video features him bizarrely pointing around to the beat of his song, and drinking himself silly in a bar. It's strange, to say the least. But I love this song. It makes me die laughing every time I hear it. In any case, here's the video for "Love on the Beat":

White House to Announce HIV Awareness Campaign Tomorrow
By Trevor on April 6, 2009 2:23 PM | 1 Comment

From an e-mail alert from CHAMP:

WASHINGTON – White House officials will team up with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to announce a new national communication campaign on HIV/AIDS Tuesday April 7th at 1:00 PM. This marks the first federally funded national domestic HIV/AIDS campaign in almost twenty years.

The Obama Administration will join with leading civil rights and HIV/AIDS groups and officials from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation to announce the first phase of the $45 million campaign. The announcement will take place in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Room 450.

What: Kick off of new national campaign on HIV/AIDS awareness

When: Tuesday, April 7, 2009 at 1:00 PM

Where: Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Room 450

Innerestin'! Hopefully it'll prove provocative and actually deal with the complexities of the 21st century epidemic.

Iowa Supreme Court Overturns Same-Sex Marriage Ban
By Trevor on April 3, 2009 12:41 PM | No Comments

Well I'll be a monkey's uncle. I didn't see this coming! Based on Equal Protection Grounds, they ruled today that the ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional:

In this case, we must decide if our state statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the Iowa Constitution, as the district court ruled. On our review, we hold the Iowa marriage statute violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution. Therefore, we affirm the decision of the district court.

...The plaintiffs produced evidence to demonstrate sexual orientation and gender have no effect on children raised by same-sex couples, and same-sex couples can raise children as well as opposite-sex couples. They also submitted evidence to show that most scientific research has repudiated the commonly assumed notion that children need opposite-sex parents or biological parents to grow into well-adjusted adults. Many leading organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers, and the Child Welfare League of America, weighed the available research and supported the conclusion that gay and lesbian parents are as effective as heterosexual parents in raising children.

...When individuals invoke the Iowa Constitution's guarantees of freedom and equality, courts are bound to interpret those guarantees. In carrying out this fundamental and vital role, "we must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding." M'Culloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 407, 4 L. Ed. 579, 602 (1819). It speaks with principle, as we, in turn, must also. See State v. Wheeler, 34 P.3d 799, 807 (Wash. 2001) (Sanders, J., dissenting).

Here's the complete PDF of the ruling, via Pam's House Blend.

Flashback of the Day: "Ironic"
By Trevor on April 2, 2009 1:59 PM | No Comments

I've had Alanis in my head all day. God bless 90s alternative rock. Alanis was one of my favorite artists, but curiously I never saw her perform live. This is strange because I was in a concert-going frenzy during the mid-90s. I saw *everybody* who did alternative rock (Bush, Third Eye Blind, and even -- yes -- Veruca Salt), as well as a bit of lesbian-folk indulgences (okay I was a Lilith Fair kind of homo). But never Alanis, sadly.

EHarmony Launces it's Forced Gay Wing
By Trevor on April 2, 2009 8:29 AM | No Comments

In case you live under a rock and are unaware, some guy sued Eharmony for discrimination against gay folks and the hetero website settled out of court. As part of the agreement, they agreed to launch a gay website similar to Eharmony. You can read the gist here.

I love the disclaimer on the front page:

It just REALLY makes you want to give them your hard-earned gay money, doesn't it????

Idiot of the Day: Roland Martin
By Trevor on April 1, 2009 9:01 PM | No Comments | 1 TrackBack

Why CNN hasn't fired this moron I have no idea. He makes the most uninformed, highly judgmental, and pedestrian kinds of commentary possible. His latest offense comes in a diatribe against smokers in an op-ed for CNN.com titled, "High cigarette taxes? Great!" Who does this asshole think he is? All we know about smoking is that its the poor and marginalized who smoke in greatest numbers today, in part because of a self-righteous anti-smoking sentiment among the middle and upper-classes. As if they don't condemn smoking and turn around and down a fifth of vodka. Spare me.

That self-righteous, self-congratulatory, highly moralizing tone is on full display in his piece:

There is nothing -- NOTHING! -- that I like about smoking.

Why someone in their right mind would want to essentially inhale fire is beyond me.

When relatives come to my home and they smoke, they can't just stand outside the front or back door. No, I send them to the furthest point in the backyard to get their nicotine fix.

I celebrate when cities pass smoking bans because the only smoke I want in a restaurant should come from a hot, juicy steak. If I'm walking down the street, and the person in front of me is leaving their trail of smoke, I'll happily speed up to get past them or publicly wave the smoke out of the way when walking by them to show my disapproval. And it angers me to drive down the street and look over to the next car and see a mom or dad puffing away as a helpless child has to sit there and inhale that junk.

You could just replace "smoking" with "having sex with men" and "smokers" with "homosexuals" to see the point I'm trying to make here. It's not so much that there's a problem with informing consumers that there are risks to smoking. Sure, that makes perfect sense. But it's that Public Health has enabled a moralistic crusade to make people who smoke not just out to be people who risk danger to their own health, but irrational, pathological subjects who need to be denigrated for their habit. They're not just making a bad decision, they're committing a SIN. 21st century religion isn't happening in churches, it's happening in the domain of Public Health.

CNN, I beg of you: Fire this idiot. He has nothing new or interesting to say.

Why are Hate Crimes Worse Than Other Crimes?
By Trevor on April 1, 2009 2:53 PM | 9 Comments

Debates about Hate Crimes Legislation are heating up again, and I want to take a moment to take an unpopular stance by asking an unpopular question: why are hate crimes worse than other kinds of crimes?

Let's start by unpacking their rationale. It seems there are a few principles that underlie hate crimes prohibitions:

1) Deterrence: Legislation against hate crimes would deter people from committing such crimes.

2) Symbolic Violence: Hate crimes are more egregious than other kinds of violence because they are the products of institutionalized prejudice and discrimination, which makes them unfairly patterned against particular groups of people. Therefore, they should be penalized more harshly.

3) Humiliating: Hate crimes are especially humiliating and denigrating, because the rationale behind their being committed is tied so closely to the victim's social group membership.

I have to say, I find none of these reasons particularly compelling. First, we have no evidence (that I'm aware of) to suggest that hate crimes statutes deter people from committing them. I think we could look similarly to the bulk of evidence for capital punishment that demonstrates that even having the penalty of death as a possible consequence for committing crime does not serve to deter or reduce violent crime. So it would make no sense to expect that Hate Crimes legislation would serve to do that.

Second, I really can't wrap my head around the idea that somehow an act of violence motivated by prejudice is somehow worse than the same act of violence motivated for any other reason. Being beaten up for being gay is a truly awful thing. But I do not believe that it is any worse than being beaten up for your money. Both are awful experiences that should be criminally punished, but I do not believe that there are adequate grounds for penalizing bias-motivated crimes more so than other kinds of crime.

Further, I truly believe that these kinds of statutes just further reify social categories and oversimplify complex situations. I'm reminded here of the case a few years ago when the Black gay DJ, Kevin Aviance, was assaulted in New York City while he was leaving the Phoenix club in drag. This was immediately labeled a gay hate crime, but it's clearly not that simple. Kevin's not just gay -- he was also in drag and Black. Sure, the assailants hurled anti-gay slurs. But how did they know he was gay? It's not about who he fucks -- it's about his gendered presentation. And were he white or not in drag, would the same situation have arisen? In other words, a potentially complex scenario gets reduced to homophobia in a "Hate Crimes" world.

Obviously I want hate rimes to end, but I don't think this kind of legislation is the right solution. I'm open to rethinking these ideas, but at the moment I believe that Hate crimes laws should not be the focus of LGBT organizations. It's the wrong battle, with very little to gain if we win. Focus on something more meaningful, like more subsidized housing for HIV-Positive people. Or immigration reform for same-sex couples. Or universal health care. Or employment non-discrimination! Sigh. But not Hate Crimes. What a waste of time, energy, and emotions.

A Draft of my "Sociology of Sexuality" Syllabus
By Trevor on April 1, 2009 12:59 AM | 3 Comments

Phew! After a few weeks of research and compiling, here's a rough draft of my syllabus for a class I'm teaching this summer, "The Sociology of Sexuality." Thoughts on the content??? There are obviously things missing, but in 7 weeks there's only so much to cover. Let me know if you have ideas for edits, substitutions, etc! Thanks!! xoxo

Unit I: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF SEXUALITY

I. Week 1: May 6th – 8th

i. Wednesday, May 6th , “Introduction to the Course”

ii. Friday, May 8th , “Socially Constructed Sexuality”

i. Schwartz, P. & Rutter, V. (1998). “The Social Origins of Desire” in The Gender of Sexuality. pp. 13-21

ii. Seidman, S. (2003). “Social Constructionism: Sociology, History, and Philosophy” [Chapter 3]. In The Social Construction of Sexuality. pp. 25-39.

II. Week 2: May 11th – May 15th

i. Monday, May 11th “Normalizing Sex”

i. Rubin, G. (1984). "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality" in Pleasure and Danger.
ii. Warner, M. (1999). “The Ethics of Sexual Shame.” In The Trouble With Normal.

ii. Wednesday, May 13th , “The Construction of the ‘Homosexual’”

i. Chauncey, G. (1989). “From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality: The Changing Medical Conceptualization of Female ‘Deviance.’” In Passion and Power: Sexuality in History.

iii. Friday, May 15th , “The Construction of the ‘Heterosexual’”

i. Katz, J. (1995). “The Invention of Heterosexuality.” Socialist Review, 20(1), pp. 7-34.

ii. Halley, J. (1993). “The Construction of Heterosexuality.” In Warner, M. (ed.), Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory.

III. Week 3: May 18th – May 22nd

i. Monday, May 18th , “The Construction of ‘Gay’ and ‘Lesbian’”

i. D’Emilio, J. “Placing Gay in the Sixties.” In The World Turned.

ii. D’Emilio, J. “Capitalism and Gay Identity.” In Passion and Power: Sexuality in History.

iii. Berube, A. “The Legacy of the War.” In Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two

Unit 2: MICHEL FOUCAULT, POSTSTRUCTURALISM, AND QUEER THEORY

ii. Wednesday, May 20th , “Foucault’s History of Sexuality”

i. Foucault, M (1980). History of Sexuality, Volume I. Pp. 3-49, 103-114.

ii. Epstein, S. (2003). “An Incitement to Discourse: Sociology and The History of Sexuality.” Sociological Forum, 18(3).

iii. Friday, May 22nd , “Foucault’s Queer Politics”

i. Halperin, D. (1995). “The Queer Politics of Michel Foucault.” In Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography. Pp. 15-125.

IV. Week 4: May 25th – May 29th

i. Monday, May 25th , “An Introduction to Queer Theory”

i. Sullivan, N. (2003). “Queer: A Question of Being or a Question of Doing?” In A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory.

ii. Halperin, D. (2003). "The Normalization of Queer Theory." Journal of Homosexuality, 45 (2).

ii. Wednesday, May 27th , “Heteronormativity”

i. Warner, M. (1995). “Introduction.” In Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory.

ii. Cohen, C. "Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?" In Black Queer Politics.

iii. Friday, May 29th , “Performativity”

i. Sullivan, N. (2003). “Performance, Performativity, Parody, and Politics.” In A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory.

ii. Esterberg, K. G. (1996). "'A Certain Swagger When I Walk': Performing Lesbian Identity.” In Seidman, S. (Ed.) Queer Theory / Sociology.

Unit 3: FEMINISM AND SEXUALITY

V. Week 5: June 1st – June 5th

i. Monday, June 1st , “The Politics of Pornography”

i. MacKinnon, C. (1993) “Defamation and Discrimination.” In Only Words.

ii. Califia, P. "Among Us, Against Us: Does Equation of Pornography with Violence Add up to Political Repression?" In Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex.

ii. Wednesday, June 3rd , “Sexual Violence”

i. Malamuth, N. M. (1996). “The Confluence Model of Sexual Aggression: Feminist and Evolutionary Perspective. In D. Buss & N. Malamuth (Eds.), Sex, Power, and Conflict.

ii. Armstrong, E., Hamilton, L. & Sweeny, B. “Hooking Up and Party Rape: The Social Organization of Gender and Sexuality at a Large Research University.”

iii. Friday, June 5th , “Sadomaschism”

i. Califia, P. “Sadomasachism and Feminism.” In Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex.

ii. Rofes, E. “Snapshots of Desire: Surviving as a Queer Among Queers.” In In Mark Thompson (Ed.), Leatherfolk.

Unit 4: SEXUAL SUBCULTURES, IDENTITIES, & PRACTICES

VI. Week 6: June 8th – June 12th

i. Monday, June 8th , “Bathhouses and Sex Clubs”

i. Rubin, G. “The Catacombs: A Temple of the Butthole.” In Mark Thompson (Ed.), Leatherfolk.

ii. Alexander, "Bathhouses and Brothels: Symbolic Sites in Discourse and Practice" In Dangerous Bedfellows (Eds.), Policing Public Sex.

ii. Wednesday, June 10th , “Sex Work”

i. Chapkis, W. (1996), "The Emotional Labor of Sex" In Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor.

ii. Wonders, N. and Michalowski, R. (2001). “Bodies, Borders, and Sex Tourism in a Globalized World: A Tale of Two Cities—Amsterdam and Havana.” Social Problems, 48(4).

iii. Friday, June 12th , “Transgender Lives”

i. Stryer, S. (2008). “Introduction to Transgender Terms and Concepts.” In Transgender History.

ii. Stryer, S. (2008). “A Hundred Years of Transgender History.” In Transgender History.

iii. Meyerowitz, J. (2003). “Introduction.” In How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States.

VII. Week 7: June 15th – June 17th

i. Monday, June 15th , “Intersexuality”

i. The Intersex Society of North America. “What is intersex?” Online at: http://www.isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex

ii. Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). "Of Gender and Genitals: The Use and Abuse of the Modern Interssexual" In Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality.

ii. Wednesday, June 17th , “Sexuality Research and its Discontents”

i. Humphries, L. (1970). “Methods: The Sociologist as Voyeur” In Tearoom Trade.

ii. Epstein, S. (2006). “The New Attack on Sexuality Research: : Morality and the Politics of Knowledge Production.” In Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 3(1).