Discussion about the "gay gene" is still happening. The health section of the Los Angeles Times recently published an article that tries to account for the existence of male homosexuality from an evolutionary perspective. According to the article, the gay gene survives, because gay men perform an important social function: they "make great uncles." Well intentioned, the author is trying to debunk a popular conservative view that explains homosexuality as a lifestyle, a choice, or a sin. She writes,

And if you don't believe in evolution--or that homosexuality in men may have biological roots, but is rather a lifestyle chosen to affront--well then, this study won't help explain anything for you. Good luck finding an alternative.

I appreciate the author's confrontation of right-wing and Creationist perspectives. Still, I have been wary of biological explanations of homosexuality ever since I read David Halperin's book Saint Foucault. In the first place, the "pink gene" theory is scientifically specious. In the second place, it's kind of offensive/heteronormative to argue that gay people should be allowed to exist because they're good babysitters. As much as I look forward to being an uncle, I have trouble imagining that my genes made me gay so that I can be a "helper in the nest." Third, the attempt to establish certain forms of sexual desire as "natural" implies that other forms of desire are "unnatural." People cannot so easily be divided into the categories "homo-" and "heterosexual." Some of us identify as bisexual; some of us prefer to sleep with transgender individuals; some of us prefer cross-generational intimacy; some of us get our kicks by licking black leather boots. Although these kinds of desire cannot be traced back to a gene, they're still legit.

Thanks to Lady Bartlett for the link.

I finally placed my order for the highly anticipated first book from Australian cultural studies extraordinaire, Kane Race. If you have any investment in Public Health, HIV/AIDS, drug use, and conceptions of biomedical power, you must read this book. Very interesting use of the notion of counterpublics here, with Kane's "counterpublic health." Here's the book's description:

On a summer night in 2007, the Azure Party, part of Sydney's annual gay and lesbian Mardi Gras, is underway. Alongside the outfits, drugs, lights, and DJs is a volunteer care team trained to deal with the drug-related emergencies that occasionally occur. But when police appear at the gates with drug-detecting dogs, mild panic ensues. Some patrons down all their drugs, heightening their risk of overdose. Others try their luck at the gates. After 26 attendees are arrested with small quantities of illicit substances, the party is shut down and the remaining partygoers dispersed into the city streets. For Kane Race, the Azure Party drug search is emblematic of a broader technology of power that converges on embodiment, consumption, and pleasure in the name of health. In Pleasure Consuming Medicine, he illuminates the symbolic role that the illicit drug user fulfils for the neoliberal state. As he demonstrates, the state's performance of moral sovereignty around substances designated "illicit" bears little relation to the actual dangers of drug consumption; in fact, it exacerbates those dangers.Race does not suggest that the use of drugs is risk-free, good, or bad, but rather that the regulation of drugs has become a site where ideological lessons about the propriety of consumption are propounded. He argues that official discourses about drug-use conjure a space where the neoliberal state can be seen to be policing the "excesses" of the amoral market. He explores this normative investment in drug regimes and some "counterpublic" health measures that have emerged in response. These measures, which Race finds in certain pragmatic gay men's health and HIV prevention practices, are not cloaked in moralistic language, and they do not cast health as antithetical to pleasure.

Kane's prose is sometimes a bit dense, but it's often truly revelatory. Here's what my professor and mentor David Halperin has to say:

"Kane Race's Pleasure Consuming Medicine supplies what we have missed for so long: a radical but responsible exploration of both the ethics and the politics of pleasure. Exhilarating in its daring and its intelligence, startling in its originality yet completely sensible in its interpretations, the book unerringly describes the paradoxical world where we now live out the cruelties and ecstasies of human embodiment."--David M. Halperin, author of Saint Foucault and What Do Gay Men Want?

In short, what are you waiting for? Order a copy!

Tonight for my "Sociology of Sexuality" class, I'm teaching a sizable chunk of David Halperin's important work on Foucault, Saint Foucault. I came across this quote while preparing that I thought was fabulous. Enjoy your Friday!:

"If there is something self-affirming and indeed liberating about coming out of the closet, that is not because coming out enables one to emerge from a state of servitude into a state of untrammeled liberty. On the contrary: to come out is precisely to expose oneself to a different set of dangers and constraints, to make oneself into a convenient screen onto which straight people can project all the fantasies they routinely entertain about gay people, and to suffer one's every gesture, statement, expression, and opinon to be totally an irrevocably marked by the overwhelming social significance of one' so openly acknowledged homosexual identity. If to come out is to release oneself from a state of unfreedom, that is not because coming out constitutes an escape from the reach of power to a place outside of power: rather, coming out puts into play a different set of power relations and alters the dynamics of personal and political struggle. Coming out is an act of freedom, then, not in the sense of liberation but in the sense of resistance."

-- David Halperin (1995). Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 30.

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.

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).

(click to embiggen)

From the 1992 "Making it Perfectly Queer" Conference. My friend referred me to the photo, posted on David Halperin's Facebook account. Totally amazing!!!! Look at Judith Butler!!!! Clutch those notes, lady!!!

Top row: Terri Geller, David Halperin, Richard Dyer, Robert McRuer, Lisa Duggan
Bottom row: Jennifer Lutman, (not sure?), Natasha Levinson, Cris Mayo, Judith Butler, Kirsten Lentz, Elizabeth Coleman

My friend and mentor David Halperin called me at the end of the Fall term last year to ask if I would be interested in working on a proposal for a cluster hire in HIV/AIDS prevention studies at the University of Michigan. He had just come from dinner with Valerie Traub -- chair of Women's Studies at UM -- and they had been talking about ways to hire new faculty who study sexuality. President Coleman, it turns out, has just launched a 5-year initiative to hire 100 new (junior) faculty in interdisciplinary areas. This seemed like a fantastic opportunity to seek out funds for sexuality studies at UM!

I eagerly signed on, and spent a month or so in the Spring drafting a short proposal that went to the Dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts -- who would then vet all the proposals from LSA and decide which ones would move forward to the President's Office. We were thrilled a few months ago to find out that the Dean had selected our proposal to move forward for the President's review! And just today, Traub sent out an e-mail to the Women's Studies community announcing that it has been officially approved by the President of the University of Michigan!

What this means is that, in the next year or two, five new faculty at UM will be hired who do work on HIV/AIDS. One full time junior faculty hire will come on board in each of the following departments Women's Studies, Anthropology, Psychology, Nursing, and Ob/Gyn. This is incredible! And to think, I had a hand in this process! Wew-hew!

So,as I've mentioned, I'm here in Chicago for a few different reasons. One of them was to attend a forum organized by my friend Jim Pickett from the AIDS Foundation Chicago (and Lifelube blogger) called "'Good' Sex? 'Bad' Sex? Just What do Gay Men Want Anyways?" featuring my mentor / friend David Halperin. The panel was moderated by the hosts of the podcast "Feast of Fools," and also featured Michelle Morales (Northwestern University) and Gary Harper (DePaul University).

It's always good to get together to discuss frankly and openly gay men's sexualities, and to have difficult conversations on controversial topics like barebacking and crystal meth use / abuse. So this forum was invaluable to provide that kind of space. David's insights into public health culture, which has focused on gay men's "bad" behavior, is always needed and welcome.

Michelle Morales, who critically engages with the scientific literature that tends to view gay men as having poor measures of health behavior, was incredibly useful / important / refreshing. She is one of many scholars calling for research on gay men that resists the "gay men have higher rates of ____ (insert drug use / suicide / other bad behaviors here)." Thank God for people like her!

In general I thought the forum went well. I have a few hesitations to the dialogue, which I've posted in the comments over on the Lifelube blog. I suppose they might only make sense if you were there, so I won't regurgitate them here (I'm also a bit too tired / tipsy to make them understandable here at the moment).

But cheers to Jim and everyone who had a hand in organizing the event! Hurrah!

Okay, so things here are settling down a bit. So now that I'm mostly done with my schoolwork (just one 5-page paper due late next week), I'm off to Chicago for the weekend to see my friend Spencer from undergrad. The agenda:

Tonight: David Halperin will be giving a talk on gay men's health and his new book, What Do Gay Men Want? at the Center on Halsted as part of the "'Good' Sex? 'Bad' Sex? Just What Do Gay Men Want Anyways?" event this evening. Jim Pickett of Lifelube has been a key organizer of this.

Tomorrow: WICKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Need I say more? I can't wait! Stacey Ellen Wolf from UT-Austin was here a few weeks ago giving a talk called "Defying Gravity: Queer Conventions in the Musical Wicked." It was really quite a fabulous talk on how typically romantic / hetero conventions in musical theatre (down to the kinds of chords used in songs) are used in Wicked to build the relationship between the two female leads. So I'm really excited to finally see this play!

Saturday: I'm torn about Saturday. Do I stay or do I go? My dear friend Maxime's friend will be visiting Ann Arbor from NYC, and they're going to go party it up in Detroit. So I'm tempted to come back for that. But I'm also tempted to stay in Chicago and party my face off with Spencer. Decisions, decisions!

Hope you have a good weekend, too! I'll be reporting back.

In anticipation of his participation in the "Good Sex? Bad Sex? Just What do Gay Men Want Anyway?" event next Thursday (details in the article or via the link - but you should RSVP here) at the Center on Halsted in Chicago (which I'll be attending!!!), Chicago's gay rag, The Windy City Times, just published this interview with David on HIV prevention and Gay Men's Health. Check it out! And read his book if you haven't yet!

David Halperin on What Gay Men Want

Windy City Times
by Amy Wooten
2008-04-09

Gay men have a lot to talk about, according to author David Halperin.

Halperin, author of What Do Gay men Want?, will be a guest at Project CRYSP's upcoming community forum on gay men's health, “'Good' Sex? ‘Bad' Sex? Just What Do Gay men Want Anyway?” The forum, which will also feature panel experts such as DePaul University's Dr. Gary Harper and Northwestern University's Dr. Michele Morales, will take place Thurs., April 17, 6 p.m., at the Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted.

The debate will revolve around gay men's relation to sex and risk, and will touch on issues such as barebacking, the clichés that are still used to attempt to understand gay men and much more.

Windy City Times: Are there a lot of conversations that we aren't having when it comes to gay men's health?

David Halperin: I think there aren't enough of them. Part of it is the need to approach gay men's health in a holistic way that isn't centered just on disease or on various kinds of social problems such as alcohol abuse or domestic violence or HIV prevention—so, the need to look at gay men's health and gay men's sexual health, in particular, in a larger contest.

WCT: So, have we been taking the wrong approach?

DH: No, I think it's natural that we should be concerned about these things. But, the other conversation that we need to have that we haven't been having enough of is are we really going to stop using condoms? If we are going to stop using condoms, or if we're going to use them less, and if we are trying to protect ourselves from infection of HIV by other means—by means that don't involve using condoms—what exactly are those means? How can we make sure we pursue them intelligently so that we don't fail at preventing the spread of HIV?

WCT: Why is the community stopping condom use, after years of pounding it in our heads that this is what you need to do?

DH: A lot of studies indicate that condom use is falling off. Some places, including the San Francisco Department of Public Health, have been promoting alternatives to the use of condoms for HIV prevention.

WCT: What are some of those alternatives?

DH: Things like partner selection, which is often called serosorting. The notion that one could perhaps avoid these condoms if one is having sex with someone who has the same HIV serology status as oneself. It's a technique that works better for HIV-positive men than HIV-negative men, since they are the ones who actually know what their HIV status is. Someone who tells you he is HIV-positive is probably not lying to you. But if we were to put more emphasis on sero sorting and partner selection, and less emphasis on condoms, certainly we need to talk about that and we need to try to make sure HIV risk reduction practices don't inadvertently produce risk increases.

WCT: Are these strategies new?

DH: They aren't all that new. They've been going on for 10 years, at least, but they are spreading out more and perhaps being used a little less deliberately than they should be.

WCT: The fact that someone like me thinks it's fairly new—is that because there has been so much emphasis on condom use?

DH: I think that's right. The CDC [ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ] has not been promoting sero-sorting. The CDC has been promoting condom use and most HIV/AIDS prevention organizations promote condoms. But there has been relatively little attempt to try to figure out what gay men are actually doing on the ground and to try to adapt health initiatives to what people are actually doing, rather than do it to get gay men to adapt to health initiatives. Another reason you might not know about this is a lot of this has been taking place in HIV-positive communities.

WCT: Is another one of the issues that health officials have not tried to figure out what gay men really want?

DH: Right. There is a huge amount of energy being devoted to figuring out what gay men really want, but it's usually in the key of disease or impaired psychology. So the notion is, “Oh, we really have to figure out what gay men want because we have to explain why they are behaving so badly and so self-destructively—why they are doing these terrible things? What on earth is going on in their little minds? What explains this weird, self-destructive, harmful behavior? Why would a normal person ever act that way?

WCT: So it's very negative.

DH: It's very negative. It posits that there is some irrational behavior going on, and it tries to imply a medical reason, which is usually some form of impairment to explain this “irrational” behavior. Those explanations can range from the supposedly gay-friendly one like post-traumatic stress disorder or grief mourning, and so forth, all the way to lack of self-control, various psychological deficits.

WCT: So, they are just using clichés about gay men?

DH: Right. Exactly. What I've been disturbed by is the way the topic of prevention revives a lot of old-fashioned medical thinking about male homosexuality, and incidentally, about homosexuality more generally because some of the times, these psychological clichés about gay men are unthinkingly extended to all queer people, even lesbians. So that's very much a problem, it seems to me. But I'm also concerned about the fact that what this does is that it reminds us that the inner life of homosexuality is something that we probably would be better not looking into because we won't like what we'll find and it's going to be bad and it's going to be used against us. Whereas I'm interested in finding non-psychological ways to talk about the inner life of male homosexuality so that the whole category of gay subjectivity doesn't have to be bracketed in favor of some truly political notion of gay identity.

WCT: What are your suggestions for creative, non-judgmental ways that we can hinder the spread of HIV?

DH: The book that I wrote is really about the political consequences of different styles of thinking. So, that's what I do. I'm not an expert on the HIV field. I'm more of a social theorist. So, I try to do this to clear away a lot of these tendencies so people really doing the hard work of prevention on the ground are able to do the positive and practical work that they're doing. They are the ones who should really be talking about the positive things that we can do. I can observe some of the ways that HIV-positive communities have responded, like POZ magazine, and in the old days, Diseased Pariah News, that were designed to claim back a voice for HIV-positive people that would not simply allow HIV-positive people to be spoken about in sympathetic or pitying tones by others. And we can talk about the particular initiatives that are being made here and there to try to do HIV prevention in ways that assume that sex is a great thing—that people should have more sex, rather than less sex. This is one of the things that Chicago is doing with Project CRYSP and LifeLube [ LifeLube.org ] . That's a stellar example. Things have been tried in similar ways elsewhere in the world in Australia, in France. It's a question, for me, anyway, not so much of prescribing these changes that should happen, so much as noticing the creative things that people have already invented here and there, and trying to champion them.

WCT: With the hopes that more cities will do this, right?

DH: Yes. It would also be good to have some legal changes. I mean, in the state of Michigan, where I live, if you're HIV-positive, in theory, it's against the law to have sex with anybody, no matter how safely and what kind of sex, without announcing to them your HIV status in advance. That's a recipe for ensuring people won't get tested. It would be good to also get the law off our backs, and there are a lot of states that have similar laws. I think it's more the rule than the exception.

… If we had in this country a national HIV prevention strategy, which we have never had, to our enduring disgrace, it might be possible to address some of these policy issues in a coherent way at a national level. Obviously, states have to enact their own laws, but the federal government, for example, nonetheless, knows how to get states to enact speeding laws when it wants to. [ Such as ] the former 55 mile-per-hour speed limit by denying a state's highway funding if they don't pass them. Similarly, with drinking age.

WCT: So, why not do something like that?

DH: Why not do something positive for HIV prevention that would carry across a national level? This is not something that's on the books. There has never been a major push in the U.S. by the government to get gay men, sex workers, IDUs [ intravenous drug users ] , various other communities—there's never been any move to empower them to help themselves. These groups of people have formed collective responses in the teeth of federal indifference or hostility.

So I'm sitting at the SFO airport, waiting to board my red-eye flight back to Detroit. I'm also trying to recover from a flu-like spell that hit me Friday night, and is now reduced to mostly nasal congestion. Needless to say, my plans for a wacky weekend in SF were decimated by my sudden illness. I did manage to make it out Saturday night to see many of my friends in San Francisco, which was remarkable given my state of affairs Friday night (high fever, body aches, chills, etc). Gross!

But in happier news, the HIV "Risk, Behavior, and Agency" working group (I'm not really sure what to call it yet) that I was attending went pretty smoothly. It included officials from SF's Department of Public Health, the CDC, a smattering of activists, HIV prevention social scientists (Jeff Parsons, Barry Adam, Bob Grant, and many more!), and sexuality theorists (Gayle Rubin, John Gagnon, Kane Race, and others). David Halperin and Bob Grant co-organized the meeting. I can't (and wouldn't want to) speak for the group, but I found the 2-day intense gathering useful in considering the state of affairs for HIV prevention generally in America. Most interventions are currently failing, and so the idea behind the gathering was to brainstorm new approaches to prevention that might reinvigorate the field. I'm not sure we were able to make any firm conclusions, but we'll meet again soon hopefully to further our thinking.

Now, as I sit here at the airport, I feel just exhausted. I fly into Michigan (where it's negative 5 degrees) at about 5:00 AM. And then I have statistics homework to do, a crapload of reading I'm behind on, and a paper to write -- all before Tuesday! All with the flu and (at best) 3 hours of sleep.

Fuck. A. Duck.

Another year, another Turkey day! Each year as the big day approaches, I'm always given pause to consider the many things that I should consider myself thankful for from the past year. This year I have quite a bit on my list -- most notably that I got accepted (after being denied) to the University of Michigan. I left San Francisco, which although many of my friends do not understand me for saying so, but I'm incredibly thankful to be out of the Bay Area. And I've been pretty darn productive professionally as an academic and activist - productivity enabled by my mentors and generous institutions like UM.

Despite being glad to leave, I'm thankful for the support and love of all of my friends in San Francisco who made my two years there bearable (and at times even rather fabulous!). I miss them all dearly. I miss dancing my gay nights away with Jackson and being invited (weeks in advance!) to home cooked meals with Ethan. I miss coming to work every day to work for Jen and going to Yum Yum House for lunch to dish about all the latest office gossip with Liz. I miss going to overpriced meals and generally being fabulous with the lovely Bonnie -- and later stumbling home from Jen's while speaking (feigning?) drunken French. Yes - for all my reservations about the city - there are many things about my time in SF that I miss, and many people that I'm thankful for knowing.

Which brings me to Ann Arbor! What a tremendous place. I knew I'd be happy here when I first met my gaggle of queers via Cookie, who brought us all together over Gays Craze. And what a fab troupe to have! We're all first years in different programs (including American Culture, Communication Studies, and History). Some of my first-year colleagues in Sociology often lament their difficulties building a social life here in Ann Arbor, but thankfully I've never been able to agree. The day before classes started I already found my base - Paul, Annah, Cookie, and 'Dre! I think we planned a road trip to Toronto within about 5 seconds of knowing each other. What gems!

I'm lucky enough to have even more folks and support here at U of M! What cosmic fate that during my first semester here, one of my academic idols Kane Race would also be here all the way from Australia as a visiting scholar. And of course my time here would have never been possible without the mentorship and support of the lovely David Halperin. I couldn't have asked for anyone better to be on my side!

Transitioning to life in Ann Arbor has, so far, been smoother than I could have ever hoped for. I'm feeling academically and professionally productive. I've got a group of fabulous friends who know how to party and how to study. And, slowly but surely, I feel like I'm starting to understand what exactly a sociologist is - and how I fit into the discipline. And heck, the University is funding my trip to Mexico next month for the "AIDS in Culture" conference where I'll present my Master's research; San Francisco's DPH is paying for me to attend a 2-day summit there in January on rethinking prevention; I'm on the Creating Change Detroit host committee and (hopefully!) presenting two workshops there in February; I've been working with the LGBTI Health Summit organizing committee to strategize for upcoming gay men's health and LGBTI Health summits; and I'll hopefully be attending the Sixth Annual UNITY Conference in Chapel Hill in April. Now that's a whole lot to be thankful for!

What a whirlwind of a week! I'm here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, staying at a lovely bed and breakfast called "The Library Bed and Breakfast" run by a really wonderful woman named Joan. She's a real treat, and if you're ever in the area, you should consider staying here. She cooks a mean breakfast and is a wonderful host.

I'm here for two reasons: 1) to check out Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan campus as I'm applying to grad school here next year and 2) to attend the "AGAINST HEALTH" conference, a convening of some of the nation's (and world's - as we have several folks from Australia and Canada) most astute scholars working critically to problematize the category of "health."

As for number one, Ann Arbor is an incredibly charming little town that I could definitely see myself spending 5-6 years in working towards my PhD. They even have a gay bar, AutBar, which I actually have yet to check out (perhaps tonight?) and a gay dance club night (which I will be checking out tonight) at a bar called Necto. Slim pickings, but not too shabby for a small college town of its size. I've also met a few boys and found them quite hospitable ;)

As for number two, the academic environment here is unparalled. The number of faculty doing work on sexuality and gender is astounding - and many of them are superstars in that field (David Halperin, Gayle Rubin, etc.). I met with several graduate students in Sociology who all praised the university and program's level of support for sexuality-related work - which is key to surviving 5-6 years at an institution. All in all, I'm rather in love with the place.

I'm happy that I made time to come out here to attend the conference. I found myself today sitting and having lunch with a group of folks doing phenomenal work on HIV/AIDS and gay men: Kane Race, Susan Kippax, Barry Adams, and David Halperin. The discussion and workshops were wonderfully informative and inspirational for my current research on young gay men and HIV prevention and for future ideas for my dissertation.

I also had the great honor and privilege to speak at the conference in tribute to Eric Rofes, who was slated to attend. It was a cathartic process to both write and deliver the speech - and I'm grateful that David Halperin invited me to do so. Here is what I had to say:

It is not easy to memorialize a giant like Eric Rofes. Upon first hearing of his death, many initially thought the news was some kind of cruel joke. If Eric’s life was about anything, it was about the survival of epic tragedy and of great struggle – his death seemed almost unthinkable at this point. He seemed almost bigger than life itself, which made his sudden death of a massive heart attack at the age of 51 all the more shocking. He is survived by his loving partner of 16 years, Crispin Hollings.

For those of you who did not know him, Eric was one of the bright lights of the movement for sexual liberation and for gay men’s health. His professional career began as a sixth grade public schoolteacher in Boston after graduating from Harvard college in the 1970s. He was eventually fired from that job when he came as a gay man to his principal and school board. Before coming out at work, he marched in one of Boston’s early gay pride parades with a bag over his head. After being fired, he quickly became a powerhouse activist within the burgeoning movement for gay and lesbian liberation in Boston – working at different times as a writer for the Gay Community News collective, the nation’s only weekly queer publication; as the founder for Boston’s first LGBT group for teachers, Boston Area Gay and Lesbian Schoolteachers; as the founder of the first Boston-area group focused on gay and lesbian voters; as the founder of two of the nation’s first queer youth groups; and as a founding member of the Boston Men's Childcare Collective, which provided childcare at women's music concerts and shelters for battered women. He somehow managed to find time during this period to publish three books that he developed with with his students at the Fayerweather Street School in Cambridge – who hired him after he was unjustly fired – including The Kid’s Book About Divorce: By, For, and About Kids in 1983.

And this was just the beginning. In the limited time that I have, I cannot possibly relay to you all of his accomplishments, but perhaps the most important to highlight were his roles as Executive Director of Los Angeles’ gay and lesbian center (the largest gay non-profit in the world); and, later, after moving to San Francisco in 1989, as executive director of the Shanti Project, a pioneering AIDS service group. Though he remained HIV-negative until his death, his work at Shanti led him to the work that he is most known for, his work on HIV/AIDS and gay male communities. His efforts fighting AIDS in what were very bleak years for urban gay men later informed his work to ignite a movement for holistic health for gay men that extended beyond STDs and HIV/AIDS.

Of course, it would be entirely inappropriate for me to say all of this without also highlighting Eric’s role in leather/SM/fetish communities as a proud bear and a tireless advocate of sexual liberation. His creative spirit for exploring and celebrating sexuality informed all of his work, and was, really, nothing short of awe-inspiring. To say that he enjoyed sex is something of an understatement. How he managed to accomplish so much professionally and still find time to so… vigorously explore his sexuality, I will never know.

It was only just over a year ago that, still living in North Carolina, I first came across Eric’s book Dry Bones Breathe: Gay Men Creating Post-AIDS Identities in Cultures as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Written in 1998, it was a daring call to reevaluate the way we understood the epidemic in a post-anti-retro-viral world – particularly how we went about doing HIV prevention. Perhaps his most jarring claim in this book was that, for at least many communities in the industrialized world, “AIDS” was over. That is to say, the medications had improved the quality of life for HIV-positive patients to the extent that many no longer exhibited the symptoms of AIDS.

When I read this, I could not help but reflect on my own life as a young gay man, and I was left struggling with a number of questions. Despite it being almost a decade old when I first picked it up, his analysis remained incredibly provocative and challenging. This is in part due to the fact that, from my perspective, Eric was one of a tiny handful of people critically and sensibly thinking about the epidemic, especially in the years after anti-retroviral therapies were introduced when many public health officials were still trumpeting the idea of the “AIDS Crisis,” a kind of scare tactic that Eric argued was outdated, wrongheaded, and entirely at odds with gay men’s experiences. His analysis was made all the more compelling for the ways that he connected his ideas to his own experiences as a sexually active gay man in San Francisco. As a self-proclaimed feminist, his work clearly took the age-old feminist axiom “The personal is political” very seriously. Dry Bones Breathe shook my core and gave me a clear direction towards a kind of work that managed to straddle the academic and activist worlds – a kind of work that allowed for the researcher to clearly position themselves within their work and their arguments.

A true child of the Internet generation, I immediately sent him a long, confusing, and winding e-mail. Some of you in the audience may well know that I have a penchant for these kinds of notes to people who’s work has such a profound impact on me. I was desperately seeking a mentor – a gay man who had seen what I had not, and could provide a personalized historical framework for my work on gay male communities – something that no movie or documentary could ever really adequately supply. More importantly, I was looking for a kind of emotional support and inspiration that was difficult to locate in North Carolina. Words cannot truly express how I felt, then, when I opened up my e-mail to find a response from Eric – no more than 2 hours later; Eric was known for his superhuman e-mailing capabilities – that was just as long-winded and just as sincere as mine had been – if not more. To have a giant like Eric Rofes take my ideas seriously – even those that he might have disagreed with – meant a great deal to me.

What is most amazing about Eric is that I am just one of many people who can tell you a story like this. Somehow between his countless research and activist projects, he made time to create rich and meaningful relationships with literally hundreds upon hundreds of people. This was perhaps what Eric loved most about life. He had an uncanny ability to connect people – even those from seemingly disparate communities – to bring people together in ways that do not often happen in our increasingly specialized work environments and fragmented communities. It was in these moments that Eric truly shined.

With his death, I find it difficult to find much to say that’s uplifting or inspirational. As a young gay man, I cannot tell you how troubling it is to lose another one from Eric’s generation – particularly a giant like Eric. Sadly, when I look into the academic world in search of queer men doing wonderfully progressive and radically queer work like Eric’s, I find a scant few of these voices. I cannot help but feel that AIDS has stolen from us some of the most radical and provocative voices, without which we are suffering – particularly young gay men. Perhaps a new generation of young queer men will take up Eric’s agenda – a movement towards a politics that somehow managed to navigate the tensions between sexual liberation and feminism. An agenda that fought tirelessly for the respect and dignity of the marginalized. In his absence, though, I find myself somewhat pessimistic. He leaves in his wake two incredibly large shoes, which I know I can never really hope to fill – but I will certainly try.

Thank you.

I found myself today on the front porch of a beautiful garden home, chatting casually, with three of the most important architects to my politics and thinking that exist. I took a deep breathe, and examined the people around me. David Halperin. Suzanne Pharr. Eric Rofes. Talk about overwhelming.

Two weeks ago, I was at Eric Rofes' house for his monthly potluck gathering to discuss issues of sexuality (politics, theory, journalism, ideology, and more). Before the meeting, Eric and I were discussing Suzanne Pharr (author and activist, wrote "Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism") - his friend and also who I brought to UNC as keynote to my final Unity Confererence. Because of our previous connection, he invited me to a benefit he was hosting at his house for The Highlander Institute today (Pharr used to be executive director of the Highlander Institute).

And so, here I am two weeks later. David Halperin let me know back in September that he was coming into town this weekend for a conference. I met David at SFSU's 2004 Summer Institute on Sexuality, Society, and Health. Incidentally, in honor of his visit, I made my first trip to Steamworks - the big gay bathhouse in Berkeley. I'll blog about that experience more later!

Somehow today I wound up having brunch with one of David's former colleagues at MIT and then I invited David to Eric Rofes' house for the benefit for the Highlander Institute.

My life is too crazy. I was lucky enough to arrive in time to the event to hear Suzanne speak. She was, as she always is, brilliant. She spoke of the political and cultural aftermath of Hurricane Katrina with the conviction that has made her career as an activist so succesful. I got a chance to chat with Eric and David - which was surreal enough in its own right (since I met David in San Francisco and then later read, in Eric's book, David's thoughts about HIV prevention work in Australia).

What a damn day!