Cover of Gay City Anthology, Vol. 2

From our friends in Seattle:

Call for Submissions (short form) Gay City: Vol.3- Repulped Lurid covers, sensational titles, scandalous storylines: the books of gay pulp were denounced and sometimes even banned but they also informed and delighted readers. Gay City Anthologies is currently seeking fiction, poetry, art, comics and photography that revisits, renews, reacts, reshapes and reinterprets the gay pulp genre of the '50s and '60s. Don't just imitate the genre; raise the bar as far as you can and make it relevant to modern issues. Happy endings are not always required but the work must reclaim positive representations of gay people and culture. Despite pulp's sometimes pornographic roots, we are not looking for erotica at this time unless it has something unique and very literary to say. For complete guidelines and important submission details contact Editor Vincent Kovar at anthology@gaycity.org.

Deadline for submissions is April 1st, 2010.

Peter from Gay City gifted me with a copy of Volume I -- some very lovely stuff inside!

Apparently 11 gay bars in Seattle received a copy of the letter above threatening to poison their clients with the deadly toxin ricin. Via Dan Savage (via JMG):

Eleven gay bars in Seattle received letters today addressed to the "Owner/Manager" from someone claiming to be in the possession of ricin, a deadly poison. "Your establishment has been targeted," the letter begins. "I have in my possession approximately 67 grams of ricin with which I will indiscriminately target at least five of your clients."

"I felt sick when I read it," said Carla, the owner/manager of Re-bar. "It's so vile. It's just hatred. It made me worry for all the other bars, and for my bartenders, and our clientele."

According to the CDC's website, someone who has ingested "a significant amount" will develop vomiting and diarrhea within the first 6-12 hours; other symptoms of ricin poisoning include hallucinations, seizures, and blood in the urine. There is no antidote for ricin but ricin exposure is not invariably fatal.

"I just had the police come pick [the letter] up," said Keith Christensen, the manager of the Eagle, when reached by phone. Christensen had already heard about the letter from other bar owners and managers, and so he didn't open it. "It's probably nothing," Christensen added, "but the economy is really screwing all the bars right now, and the last thing we need is something ramping up the not-go-out mode people seem to be in right now. It's really freaky that someone would do something like this at a time like this."

Scary! The Seattle Times says the FBI is investigating.

Here's a few gems from this past weekend in Seattle. Thanks to Kaijson for sharing the photos!

Jordan, Jason, Me, Bill, Chris, and Kaijson and Ieon at the Leadership Dinner

Kaijson and I shootin' the shit!

Gays, gays, gays!

Fellow PhD-bound gay, Jason, and I

"Flickr User TooHotty yesterday uploaded this photo to his account. He writes: "After 11 years of my dad never mentioning the word 'gay' or acknowledging the fact that I am, I got this in the mail. It's totally awkward, and came with a check. I hate to think that this is all he knows about my lifestyle.'" (Via Towleroad)

In Seattle, Chris Bartlett and I facilitated a workshop on how to resist lousy research. In particular, this was feeding off of earlier conversations on MRSA, the supervirus, etc. Here are 11 practical ideas we came up with to resist bad scholarship on Gay Men's Health:

1. Improve our understanding and ability to critique research methods, particularly the use of focus groups by prevention marketing agencies 2. Adding behavioral / identity questions to existing ongoing large-scale research projects 3. Form a National Gay Men's Health Community Advisory Board (CAB), where we would encourage researchers to voluntarily submit their work for critical feedback 4. Funding drives the agenda --> Influence funding's agenda 5. Develop a list of funding priorities for Gay Men's Health research 6. Start a Health Research Blog, where we could critique unethical / "bad" scholarship and praise "good" scholarship on GMH 7. Train doctors, researchers, and nurses while they're in school 8. Create national database of research abstracts, protocols (Wiki?) 9. Provide examples of good research, not just examples of bad 10. Form independent Gay Health Institute 11. Push for the funding of new and innovative prevention strategies, interventions, and organizations -- not just the same old, same old.

With the upcoming administration change, we in particular discussed the importance of #5, to influence the decisions in the coming few years about what priorities to set in regards to Gay Men's Health.

Well I had quite the afternoon in Seattle! I got up early to check-out of my hotel and travel to the airport in Seattle for my flight back to Detroit. Very sad to leave the Gay Men’s Health Summit – what a wonderful group of thoughtful, inspiring, and dedicated men. It’s important for me to recharge at these events, and despite the high cost this year (funds are tight for me as they are for everyone), it was totally worth a few weeks of ramen-eating.

I was planning to be lazy and take a taxi to the airport, but realized while sitting in the lounge area of the Summit that this was just not financially practical. It would cost around $40 or so – money I needed for food. I mentioned that to Marcus – a lovely Canadian ‘mo sitting nearby – who mentioned back that there was a cheap bus that took you to the airport for $1.50. Seattle is really cool because they have busses running underneath the city where a future light rail system will be implemented. Fabulous. I realized that if I left at that moment, I could make it with extra time. Marcus even traded me $2 American for my $2 Canadian, the only cash I could find in my man-purse. Thanks, babe!
Cash in hand, I made the trek six blocks to the underground bus station. How neat! It felt simultaneously futuristic and ancient. Busses. Underground. Weird! Anyholler, I asked the friendly security guard down in the depths for directions to the appropriate place to catch my bus. She informed me that there were two busses – the 174 and 194 – and “One takes 20 minutes and the other takes an hour and a half. Now, which one do you want?” She laughed, and pointed me towards the decidedly faster 194 option. In about 10 minutes, I was on the move.

The beginning of the bus ride wasn’t particularly remarkable for the most part. I was sitting across the aisle from an incredibly obnoxious, loud, and immature younger couple. The man may have been an Army veteran based on his camo outfit, but God bless I hope the Army never employed such an idiot. An older woman sitting across from me shared my misery in their company, as we constantly tried to avoid eye contact with the couple. At one point the woman in the couple (with a full moustache – no really, it was amazing) told the older lady that she “had pretty jewels,” to which the older woman gave a weak smile and thank you. She went on to say that “I used to have a beautiful three-stone diamond ring that my husband gave me,” with the man with her (her husband?) adding “It was platinum!” She continued, “But I sold it for seventy dollars,” while the husband mumbled that “it was appraised for $1700!” Weird.

About that time, the bus started to slow down, and then the driver quickly slammed on our brakes as we came to a jarring stop. The man in the couple next to me flew face-forward a few seats ahead, and generally everyone freaked out as they were thrown around the bus. I braced myself on a partition nearby, bruising my wrist a bit but otherwise unscathed. Everyone was okay, but no one seemed to know what happened. We had come to a complete stop, with cars whishing by us on the freeway. Immediately the obnoxious couple began speculating loudly as to what happened, and what that meant for us. “We rear-ended somebody. Gonna have to wait for a bus to come get us now. This isn’t safe. There are heavy, extremely fast moving metal objects flying around us.” The man became increasingly unruly, at one point standing up and yelling “We need triangles and cones! Triangles and cones! We need triangles and cones, and maybe a flare if we have one. This isn’t safe. Very heavy, metal objects flying around us. Triangles and cones! We need triangles (long pause) and cones!”

Anywho, news travelled to the back of the bus that indeed we had rammed into someone – but the driver never once made an announcement over the loudspeaker to let us know that. We didn’t know what was going to happen. So we just waited patiently – most of us, anyways. The woman in the couple was whining about how hungry she was. “I want a pumpkin pie milkshake.” Actually that sounded pretty tasty, but she went on to name a variety of foods she would have liked to have at that moment in time. “I’m so hungry,” she whined. 28 going on 12.

After maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, the bus slowly started moving again when we heard a loud BANG to the left of the bus. Everyone curiously looked out the left side of the windows, where we saw a trail of smoke in the far left lane. What happened? The bus kept moving, and after 500 yards we saw exactly what happened. A green SUV was absolutely destroyed, the entire front of the vehicle crushed, with some kind of liquid spilling out of the front while the headlights flashed and alarm sounded. I have never seen a car crash before, but this one looked pretty bad. The windows were tinted, and I couldn’t see where the driver was. Was he or she okay? Cars kept whizzing by, no one stopping to help. Someone at the front of the bus called 911, but otherwise I didn’t see anyone stop to intervene. I felt totally traumatized in that moment, worried for that person’s well-being but unable to get out of the bus to assist in any way, haunted by the million dollar question: Would I have stopped if I was driving behind the car?

Apparently a dump truck hit the SUV, a truck we saw pulled over (unscathed) a few hundred yards ahead, driver on his cell phone. I felt nauseous, sad. To be so close to a traumatic event is haunting. Proximity is everything. Somehow, looking through the smashed windshield of the SUV, I felt that person’s fear. My heart sank at the sight of the crumpled vehicle. Was that somebody’s mother? Brother? Maybe their lover?

Would I have stopped? Or – like everyone else – would I have just driven around the car, hurrying on to my important meeting?

Holy canoli! There was a whole lot of Twittering going on at the GMHS in Seattle this past weekend. I took some time to try to reconstruct the fabulous / amazing / mind-blowing Twittering dialogue that happened during my presentation on bottom identity. For the unfamiliar, Twitter is basically something like a mini-blog that people update from their handheld phones. At the GMHS, people have been coordinating activities and giving feedback on sessions during the actual sessions. It's really something to watch happen.

You'll notice that there are, like, eight people Twittering below. Some were in the workshop. Some were in other workshops. And others weren't even at the Summit! Mindblowing. They're roughly reconstructed chronologically, in reverse order. So the beginning of the workshop is at the bottom. So to speak :)

kaijson: @harveymilk or do they - poz bttms and their diff way of compt bttmhood - still to be discovered

harveymilk: Positive bottoms have a different way of contemplating bottomhood.

Tank1275: sexual behaviour is fluid, I started life as a small bubbling brook, then became a stream before widening to the sea

harveymilk: RT @u761508: @harveymilk he could look at the fluidity of sexual practice layered on ascribed or assumed identity (that seems more rigid)

u761508: @harveymilk Trevor's research could look at the fluidity of sexual practice layered on ascribed or assumed identity (that seems more rigid)

Tank1275: I think sexual story telling is one of my great pleasures, especially on lifelube.org

harveymilk: Alex: there is a need for gay men to tell a story about their sexual identity. Story telling as an access to some of these issues.

Kripalu: also used to think tops "could" be straight if they liked to fuck hole

ATG: @Kripalu I would agree! The subtle texture of "bottom-top," whatever these terms means for people, has changed.

Tank1275: as a top there is a pressure to be perpetually hard and fuck for hours, which can be challenging

harveymilk: @kaijson au contraire, I love all of your comments.

harveymilk: Alex: there is a need for gay men to tell a story about there sexual identity. Story telling as an access to some of these issues.

kaijson: @harveymilk did you find my comment too aggressive?

Kripalu: @harveymilk it used to be more about power. Now it's relational if those are different

jimberly: I am not there, but nothing new about power and aggression belonging to the bottom

Kripalu: I do find myself more confident and relaxed as bottom

harveymilk: @atg I love that @tank1275 is in the next room and tweeting on two workshops at the same time. He is versatile!

ATG: @Tank1275 @harveymilk Truly wish I was there with y'all!

harveymilk: Bottom identity allows people to understand some similarities.

Kripalu: As "vers/ bottom" I was interested in exploring less than 100 percent bottom

Kripalu: I have prejudice against power bottoms

harveymilk: @kripalu for some, bottoming is default, but in context can change. Hoppe: relational identities.

harveymilk: @kripalu is speaking Yay! Curious that nothing came up about versatility.

jimberly: Got it

Kripalu: @jimberly 18

harveymilk: @jimberly I came in late, but I seem to remember it is a smallish sample... qualitative starter project, leading into his dissertation.

jimberly: How big was sample?

harveymilk: @Tank1275 what if you want to get out of your mind during sex? just wondering....

Tank1275: @jimberly @harveymilk lots change roles depending on many factors and the top-bttm dynamic creates hierachies which undermine us

Kripalu: when my friend thanks me for servicing him, I always say "no, thank you"

kaijson: we need positive bottom studies.

harveymilk: request for same study of HIV poz bottoms or HIV neg tops, or other variations...

ATG: @harveymilk Oh, another good one in addition to heteronormative is gendernormative. I use both liberally. :-D

kaijson: "maybe there is a difference in identifying in being a bottom and being a bottom"

kaijson: i am blown away that someone would suggest that b/c this data is not replicatable we shouldnt be doing it...

jimberly: Lots of men don't identify

kaijson: these question must start to being asked

jimberly: Curious as to why bottoming is ironic

harveymilk: @jimberly re:ironic perhaps "taking it" as a bottom is not sexist/heteronormative, but an ironic parody of the hetero version... (my words)

kaijson: are people really being honest about describing their sexual likes and desires

ATG: Well then. Ahem. LOVE LOVE LOVING @harveymilk's Twitterstream from the "Gay" "Men's" Health Summit! I just love HM! *mwah* #gmhs08

kaijson: people being scared about stating on paper or in dialgue what they really like -

harveymilk: True True @jimberly, the crowd is really digging into the meanings-- very interesting- and perhaps first opportunity for all of them.

kaijson: responses: hetero-normative and sexist

cyberczar: @harveymilk "heteronormative" … I love it!

kaijson: "For the love cum"

kaijson: Trevor suggests it is ALL OVER this work!

kaijson: what does cum mean to gay men?

pozguy75: @kaijson we all have the responsibilty, regardless of position or heirarchy!

kaijson: interesting that the bottom would be the one to initiate the use of the condom - do tops have no responsibility - OR DO WE ALL regardless

kaijson: how can video taping NOT need IRB approval?

kaijson: i am an aggressive bottom - an example narrative being different

kaijson: i love passionate sex...i love...the other kind, that loves your hole, all he wants is just to fuck you, diump his load and leave...interesg

kaijson: ifirst time i heard about his study, this past summer i said he was / is brilliant, and he is!

kaijson: it is a great session.

harveymilk: Experiencing bottom as a celebration of pleasure. What about the irony of bottoming? Not heteronormative/sexist, but different.

kaijson: ...transcending and amazing...w description about a certain tupe of sex that starts beyond the physicality of sex.

harveymilk: Comment from audience: seemed sexist and heteronormative...

kaijson: do bottoms control tops? is there such power issues?

harveymilk: Using relationships as a prevention strategy.

harveymilk: Prevention techniques for bottoms: very clear seroadaptation.

kaijson: im a bottom, not a waitress....

kaijson: in fact, with small focus groups, even if robust dialouge, limiting...how can this be studied on a larger scale? should it

harveymilk: This is such a good session it almost defies tweeting...

kaijson: it truly does take "sex" to a level of intamacy

kaijson: taking the time to understand your partner!

kaijson: Grrrrr.....this is an exmplae of taking control of the questions being asked.

harveymilk: I love the font that Trevor has used in his presentation. Very old-fashioned, like My Weekly Reader.

harveymilk: @kaijson this qualititative focus group work is important for topics that, like this, are unlikely to be funded for study initially.

kaijson: why is this, taking it as feminine

kaijson: "...not about the sensation in my ass, it is about the sensation in my head" really?

kaijson: "sex is just in the head, our head"

kaijson: still in the roots of bootomhood, there seem to be more questions than answers

kaijson: a power exchange going back and forth with it.

kaijson: playing with the power concept.

harveymilk: "Offering up my body to a man physically and mentally" --one description

harveymilk: I am getting to the bottom of bottoms! Trevor Hoppe's workshop.

Kripalu: bottom workshop packed! So to speak

Folks interested / working on Gay Men's Health organizing should head on over to Ning to join the social network we've set up to organizing and network among leaders, thinkers, activists, and practitioners. Join in the fun, and become my friend! Above is a screenshot of my blog entry on my bottom presentation. More fun to come! xoxox

Hey folks! As promised, here is the link (zip file) to a copy of my Powerpoint slides from the Gay Men's Health Summit this past weekend in Seattle. Exciting presentation / feedback! I would love to hear your thoughts on the direction of my research based on the quotes you'll see highlighted here. xoxoxo

I'm preparing for my presentation tomorrow on my research this summer in San Francisco on bottom identity among HIV-negative men there, and as I was looking for images while putting together my Powerpoint slides, I stumbled on this interesting photo set from Flickr user iieeef.

Obviously, I'm interested in the way that top/bottom categories are culturally gendered (while recognizing the variations in this "on the ground"), and this photo set surely evidences that...

Hey everyone! I'm in Seattle for the Gay Men's Health Summit and having an AMAZING time! What a whirlwind of a day its been. I've had the pleasure of chatting with Lifelubes Jim Pickett; the amazing Chris Bartlett (see his Twitter, which he updates when he should be napping); LA's own Tony Valenzuela (see this amazing recent article); and countless other amazing gay men's health activists, thinkers, and strategists. So lucky to be in their company!

Tomorrow I give my plenary remarks on how power structures wellness. I'll post the full remarks (they're not long) tomorrow after the event. I think it's pretty provocative stuff, but I guess I'm a bit biased! Anywho, I may be slow to update these next few days, as I'll be busy workshopping and mingling. I'm presenting my bottom research for the first time; taking part in a panel talk on bareback porn; and of course doing the plenary session. Oy vey! I can't wait to dive in and meet so many amazing activists!!!!

xoxoxo

Exciting news from Seattle! I've been invited to speak on a panel at the opening plenary session of the 2008 Gay Men's Health Summit taking place next month in Seattle. How exciting! If you're not familiar, the Gay Men's Health Summit is a wonderful gathering of activist, organizers, thinkers, practitioners, and researchers all committed to improving gay, bisexual, transgender and queer men's health. This will be my first GMHS -- I've previously attended the National LGBT Health Summit in Philadelphia, which got me hooked on this group of fabulous activists.

I'll also be doing a workshop on my bottom research! Very exciting! Can't wait to get some initial feedback on my preliminary examinations of this data.

Registration is of course still open. Get up on it!

Here's a little promo:

So I spent the better part of today sending a flurry of Beyond Masculinity press releases and emails to hundreds of newspapers, magazines, women's studies departments, and LGBT organizations. The work has already started to pay off! The Seattle Gay News will be featuring Bmasc in their Pride issue; I did an e-mail interview with Q-Notes(of Charlotte -- my hometown!) for their Pride issues as well; Lifelube has posted about Bmasc; and so has reader Christopher Hennessy on his blog! More to come, I hope!

You can find the press release for Beyond Masculinity here.

Tony Valenzuela and I chatted it up last night about planning a workshop for the upcoming Gay Men's Health Summit, taking place October 17-21 in Seattle. Very quickly, we realized that our ideas were for something much bigger than a singular workshop -- but rather on a series of related sessions featuring smart / sex-positive content on gay men's health, risk and prevention.

So far, we've sketched out five workshops that we'd love to see scheduled for Seattle. There are many more important ideas out there. Can you add to this list? We'd love to have your input!!!

1) The Ins and Out of Transmission Risk: At two recent forums in Chicago and Detroit, I (Trevor) realized that many conversations on HIV / gay men's health get bogged down in bringing everyone to the same page on the actual data that exists on transmission / risk. This includes questions like: Is oral sex risky? Does taking ARVs reduce risk? Is superinfection likely / possible? And so on and so forth. This would be the first step in this track, just to try and get some of those questions out of the way.

2) Bareback Porn: There are many different "kinds" of workshops that might happen here, but some questions: How do we think about the proliferation of bareback porn over the past 10 years? What's the relationship between gay men's desires and porn consumption? What happens when most gay porn gets produced in a city like San Francisco -- where testing rates are high and serosorting appears to be an effective strategy for risk reduction -- and consumed in cities unlike San Francisco (where testing rates are low, thus making serosorting a disastrous strategy for risk reduction)?

3) Sex Panic! The Media and the Risk Narrative: MRSA and the "Superbug" New York Case provide two excellent case studies for 1) how public health / epidemiological research involving gay men is disseminated to the media and 2) How the media then reports / (mis)construes that data. Presentations of these case studies could prove useful springboards for how we might consider interventions to prevent another MRSA / Superbug panic.

4) Are HIV-related CBO's Actually Community Based Anymore?: Over the past 25 years, communities hit by HIV have worked hard to build robust institutions to help manage / treat / prevent HIV/AIDS. Along the way, organizations that began as community efforts have seemingly become detached public health institutions that view gay men simply as one "at risk population." Is it even possible to hold these organizations accountable for their work anymore, given this bureaucratic proliferation? Should we (as community members) expect that these organizations will produce the "best" prevention strategies?

5) Public Health Scholarship and the Risk Narrative: How can researchers design and execute studies that avoid the pitfalls described by a growing number of critical prevention studies scholars who have argued against the disease / risk model for public health research. This would be more of a "hands on" discussion for / by researchers who work with gay men.

6) Your Idea Here!

Really - feedback here would be super helpful! Are there speakers you'd like to see on this topic that might be headed to Seattle? Topics that should be covered? Let me know!

xoxox

Trevor