The latest and greatest "The View From the Bottom" is now live! Jackson and I filmed this new piece while on gaycation on the Connecticut Coast. How very East Coast yuppie of us! In this episode, we dish on boyfriends who don't like to give head, dating another bottom, rectal microbicides, having HPV warts removed, and more! Enjoy!
"WE WERE HERE: VOICES FROM THE AIDS YEARS IN SAN FRANCSICO"
Director: David Weissman and Bill Weber
Trevor's Rating: 5 / 5 Stars
I can recall sobbing uncontrollably exactly three times in my adult life. Last night was one of those times. I ventured out to the Castro theatre for the "sneak peek" screening of "We Were Here: Voices from the AIDS Years in San Francisco." I knew I was in for a tear-fest, but I had no idea just how incredibly moving and utterly devastating the film would be. Before the screening, both the filmmakers admitted not wanting to make this film -- how can you possible represent the horror of those years without doing some injustice, without leaving some story untold? The idea is daunting.
No documentary to my knowledge exists that chronicles these years so intently, most likely because these stories are so incredible painful to tell -- and just as painful to listen to and absorb. I can only imagine that this film's road to the screen is paved in rivers of tears. As someone who did not experience those years, these representations are my only access to the memory of an era that shaped my gay world. It's why I have the kind of sex I do. It's why I have so few gay mentors from that generation. It's why bathhouses closed and disco died. And it's probably why gay marriage is the 21st century gay raison d'être.
As such, I listen to these stories intently whenever I can, mostly in the form of movies -- Longtime Companion, It's My Party, Angels in America, Sadness, and the like. With the exception of William Yang's incredible Sadness, these representations are rarely retrospective. They are told from the battleground itself rather than the hill overlooking the cemetery years later. This kind of war analogy is invoked several times in the film: as one interviewee explains, AIDS was what World War II was to many Americans. But of course as a comparison it is somewhat limited in its utility. War involves a coordinated opponent that you can see or at least pinpoint on a map. AIDS turned gay men's own bodies against them, crippling the young and muscular as quickly as it did the old and infirm. And during the first years of the epidemic, they had absolutely no idea how it was transmitted or who might already be infected.
Five individuals -- four gay men and one woman -- narrate the film, each with a unique experience that adds a new facet to the incredibly rich and devastatingly moving story. A flower vendor remembers giving away flowers to neighbors who wanted to bury their friends with dignity but had no money to give. An artist chokes back tears as he relives his lover dying as he frantically drove him to the hospital -- and in a heartbreaking turn, losing a second lover to the disease a few years later. A volunteer at the AIDS ward in San Francisco's General Hospital remembers finding a way to be a part of a gay community in comforting those who were dying. Their stories are heart wrenching.
The film was screened to a sold out crowd at the Castro Theater. Many in the room had lived through those awful years -- some in San Francisco, others elsewhere. Sitting in that room full of so many sobbing, hurt, and mournful gay men was one of the most challenging experiences of my life. At one point early in the film, a series of self-portraits by the photographer John Davis flashed across the screen. The series, titled "FIERCE," shows the artist emaciated, his body decimated by his illness. His naked, pale figure is contorted, stretched into alarming positions. An IV line is implanted in his chest. The crowd was silent except for the wailing howl of one man towards the back who could no longer hold back his tears. Even now as I write this, I cannot help but bury my face in my hands and cry. I will never forget the sound of that man's anguish. It will haunt me for the rest of my life. (And I'm not the only one to have this experience at the premier, it seems.)
Davis' self-portraits are both grotesque and stunningly beautiful at the same time. After the film, the director noted that these photos documented the duality of the epidemic so beautifully that they helped him to conceive of the film. On the one hand, you have thousands of men dying -- leaving behind friends, lovers, tricks, clients, parents, children, and admirers. On the other, you have an outpouring of support from both gay men and those outside the community, helping to take care of those who were dying and to fight for the support HIV-positive people needed to survive. AIDS could have destroyed gay community. But it didn't. Gay men's resilience in the face of death itself is nothing short of awe-inspiring.
The moment the film ended and the credits began to roll, the floodgate of my emotions let loose. I bent over in my chair, put my head in my hands, and gasped for air in between sobs. The crowd rose to its feet for a standing ovation, but I could not get out of my chair. I stayed in my seat, bawling. Crying for all those men I never knew, who I wish desperately were here today. For all their sass, for all their sex, and for all their creativity that was snuffed out far before it's time. But they're not here. And that is one of the hardest parts about being a post-AIDS gay man for me. Missing what I did not know. Longing for what I cannot have.
I'm in Toronto this weekend doing a writer's retreat with my lovely co-conspirators for the "Bottom Monologues" project -- Erik, Alex, and Matthew. We're getting a lot of fabulous work done on the project already, with another day of brainstorming ahead of us. Above you'll see the cover sheet for the "Master List" of all the submissions we received from an informal online questionnaire, which 172 lovely bottoms generously responded to! In all, over 300 pages of delicious material to sort through, reflect on, and digest for the stage.
So far, we've concocted seven character sketches for the show. From transmen to escorts to "liberated" poz bottoms, we've got quite a range of experiences to share! What do YOU want to see in the show?
This video tribute to Ms. White herself is just incredible. The details from JMG:
The St. Olaf Glee Club, better known as Frank DeCaro, Fredrick Ford and Jim Colucci, have created a hysterical Grandmaster Flash-y tribute to Betty White. DeCaro is a midday host on SiriusXM's OutQ, Colucci (his husband) is the author of The Q Guide To The Golden Girls. (They were a hilarious companions on my trip to Key West last October.) You may know Frederick Ford from gay porn, although he's recently pursued a career as a singer and performed at NYC's Folsom East last year.
I stumbled across 50Faggots today through their Facebook group. Their website is stunning, as is the footage they've collected from interviews with 10 femme gay boys in NYC, DC, and Chicago over the past two years that you get a taste of in the trailer below:
Can't wait to see more! They're having a launch party May 13th at Hydrate in Chicago, hosted by the *incredible* Cyon Flare (who I saw perform back in 2008) and Acid Betty. Road trip!
So I was interviewed two summers ago for a documentary on gay masculinity, Christopher Hines' The Butch Factor. It's debuting this Saturday on LOGO at 8 PM! Check out the preview below:
It's actually a serious question, and one I found myself pondering last night on the dancefloor at Menjo's in Detroit. I was surrounded by a sea of women - I almost thought perhaps Maxime and I had made the mistake of coming on ladies not. But no, this was not ladies night. It was a run-of-the-mill twinkfest "College Night" at Menjo's, yet at least 1/3 of the attendees were of the female variety.
Let me clarify a bit: These weren't just any version of the straight girl. They're not even classifiable as "fag hags." These women were more like sorority girls than they were fagalicious hipsters. These are the kind of girls who bop up and down on the dance floor enthusiastically with their long hair swishing from side to side, making ridiculous attempts to rub their asses against gay men's crotches while grinning "mischievously" from ear to ear. They're dressed in their finest Forever 21 and Wet Seal garbs, with some generic hoop earrings to boot. You'll find them stocked in gay bars across the country. The come in packs, typically with at least one gay friend in tow -- but on occasion they arrive sans-homo.
So with that specification in mind, I have to ask: Why are they here? And I mean that question quite seriously. The obvious answer is that they came to party with their gay friends, but that seems like a curious answer: We don't generally show up in packs to straight clubs to party with our straight friends. And even when we do, we certainly don't comprise nearly a third of the crowd. No, something more systemic is happening here, something more interesting.
"Straight men are to me what tribal communities along the Amazon must have been to 19th century riverboat Anthropologists. They fascinate me, but I have no interest in getting off this boat to find out more."
I'd imagine being a straight girl has its ups and downs. You get access to dumb straight dick, but then again that dick is attached to a less appealing person. Straight men are to me what tribal communities along the Amazon must have been to 19th century riverboat Anthropologists. They fascinate me, but I have no interest in getting off this boat to find out more. Straight women don't have the luxury of tourism as I do, it seems. They have to find some way to get along with and, god forbid!, cohabitate with these people. If you've ever seen an average straight boy's college dorm room, you'll understand why this could be challenging: Empty Doritos bags strewn across the floor, half-empty PBR cans laying on top of desks, the smell of manscent and stale beer filling the air, a knee-high stack of Playstation 2 games beside the TV.
I'm always amazed when I go to straight clubs on campus here at UM and see how highly sexualized these spaces are. On any given Thursday night, Rick's here on campus will be slammed with 19 year olds with fake IDs, gyrating against each other frantically while sloppily making out against the wall. There is a certain desperation in their efforts, which is likely not unrelated to the fact that they have to get blackout-drunk to be able to explore their sexual desires. Growing up in Michigan doesn't exactly prepare you to feel good about your bodies or your desires, it seems. Getting wasted may be one strategy for managing that shame.
Which leads me back to my initial question: Why are a certain number of these girls MIA from Rick's on Thursday, instead opting to make the trek to College Night at Menjo's? I think the answer has to do with them searching for a place to have fun without the looming gaze of straight men. I know that's a simplistic account, but I think they're faced with a certain amount of pressure at straight bars to smile and flirt and be generally accessible to straight men. I don't mean this to say that straight men are bad people, but rather than straight girls may just want to party without them sometimes. To have fun, without the weight of hetero-sexual tension. So instead of heading to Rick's, they come to Menjo's.
I don't know what to say about their presence. Personally, I find them pretty annoying -- to be perfectly frank. They are not socialized as gay, and thus utterly clueless about gay culture except for what they learned watching Will & Grace. They are the ultimate cockblock, jerking their friends away from potential tricks to scurry to the dance floor -- and keeping those tricks at a distance by pseudo-humping to the music. They are here to party, not get laid, and thus get pissed if their gay friend ditches them for a make-out session. And the worst of them have the temerity to walk into a gay bar and judge its patrons and the establishment itself.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not against letting straight women into gay bars. But the straight women I like to see at gay bars have a sense of what it means to be queer. They may not be gay themselves, but they have their own sense of faggotry within. These women may be referred to as "fag hags" or "fruit flies." They appreciate what makes gay culture gay, and don't just come in from time to time to release some steam. In my book, these women are more than welcome at gay bars. So while I certainly understand what makes the girls I've described in this piece show up at Menjo's -- and I have a lot of compassion for the crap they have to put up with in their homeland -- I'm begging you, ladies, please don't turn your problem of straight men into our problem of putting up with your drunk asses. You may be having a blast, but most of the gay boys around you are secretly wishing you would leave.
Live from Acapulco! Well, not quite live - but we did film this past weekend on our beautiful balcony during our Spring Break vacation in Mexico. Me and Maxime have quite a great episode in store for you, complete with frank discussions on being a femme bottom, having sex without fear of HIV, cruising, vacationing with straight friends, and having straight friends in general. Fasten your seatbelts, girls, it's gonna be a bumpy ride!
How could I not read this book? I just had to! Precisely because I feel that I have been pretty good these last years at desiring Arabs. But what a disappointment! In spite of an obvious knowledge of his field, I found myself in a strong disagreement with Massad's point of view particularly as it is expressed in the chapter, "Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World." Here, Massad analyzes the so-called "Gay International" movement in an effort to criticize Western gay activists and more generally international human rights agencies that purport to fight homophobia internationally. He argues that these activists operate without any understanding of non-western sexualities, and as such engage in a kind of cultural imperialism in their efforts. More specifically, he argues:
"By inciting discourse about homosexuals where none existed before, the Gay International is in fact heterosexualizing a world that is being forced to be fixed by a Western binary". (188)
Let me first raise some suspicion regarding Massad's assertion of a so-called "Gay International." I am reminded here of paranoid delusions of a very powerful communist movement in the USA during the McCarthy era. I'm not the first to argue this about Massad - as Joseph Scagliotti noted in his review of the book (titled "The Myth of the Gay International"):
In other words, sex was all cool and fluid in the ancient East, and guys used to be able to "penetrate" other guys and not have to worry about being called anything. Those were the good old days, when sex didn't have to have horrible Western identities. Everyone was straight, so life was easy and gay. Then along came the "Gay International" and ruined it all, compelling poor straight people or bisexuals in those countries who are practicing their same-sex expressions into a gay (or straight) identity, and bringing out the worst in governments that previously paid no attention but now are forced to call in the hangman for the lovers who choose the wrong side.
If the Gay International was as influential as Massad implies - able to organize thousands of activists with a multi-million dollar budget - then presumably it would have found some success in securing political exile for Arabic people who have fled their countries of origin because of homophobic persecution. This, of course, is not the case.
Moreover, in lumping "Western gay activists" into this category of the "Gay International," Massad is himself constructing a conception of "the West" as coherent and unproblematic. Yet we know that within the West there are spirited and highly contested debates over what should constitute a politics of (homo)sexual identity. Gay marriage, for instance, has been the site of considerable debate between those who think it is the end-all-be-all of "gay rights," while other, more radical perspectives view it is an assimilationist effort to gain access to a corrupt, sexist institution.
Thus, even if we take Massad to be correct in his critique of the Orient as the colonial production of a Western knowledge, he should also think that both the categories of "Western world" and "Arab World" need to be deconstructed: their coherence is a facade, their own identities are plural and often in opposition. So when Massad reproaches this mythological "Gay International" for imposing a western homosexual identity in the Arabic world, I wonder what kind of essential identity does he postulate for the Arab World, and why this cultural unity should not be challenged by marginal subcultures?
After all, if the existence of the Gay International is possible today, isn't it the consequence of some historical, aggressive, proud, and/or painful sexual liberation initiated by a bunch of queers many years ago? I understand that his kind of approach may be strategic - at least from a political point of view - in that it is clearly a response to racist and neo-colonial constructions of Arabic cultures. But how could Massad avoid the issue of questioning the cultural hegemony of one dominant identity over many subaltern identities struggling for survival and expression in the margins of the Arab World?
I am thinking here of Jarrod Hayes' argument in his recent book, Queer Nations: Marginal Sexualities in the Maghreb, in which he argues that North African writers (for instance Driss Chraibi, Rachid Boudjedra, Assia Djebar) succesfully deconstructed the idea of one, united, coherent identity for Arabic Nation. This national identity which, of course, is patriarcal and homophobic, is regularly challenged by arab artists who promote alternative identities and ways of live for the Arab world in which they live. On a more contemporary note, I wonder what would Massad make of Abdellah Taia, an openly gay Moroccan writer who fiercely advocates in the Moroccan media in favor of a political acceptance of homosexuality in Morocco. Is Taia a secret agent of the Gay International? Has he been brainwashed by western ideology?
Another source of disappointment, not to say anger, is the way Massad revisits the gay bashing that happened in Egypt on the Queen Boat. In the section "Defending Rights" of his third chapter, Massad offers his interpretation of the 2001 police raid against a gay party going on in a boat on the Nile in Egypt. In the end, 55 men were arrested and had to face, on top of a trial, the fury of the crowd. This police raid triggered a variety of reactions in Western news outlets, most of which tended to fault the police and sympathize with the Egyptian men who were arrested. This is what Massad writes:
"Clearly most Egyptian men who practice same-sex contact neither know English nor have the wherewithal to afford Internet access, much less know how to use it. This is important in that the police do not seek to, and cannot if they were so inclined, arrest men practicing same-sex contact but rather are pursuing those among them who identify as 'gay' on a personal level and who seek to use this identity as a group identification through social and public activities. The campaign of the Gay International misses this important distinction". (183)
Interesting distinction, indeed, between Egyptian men who do not identity as gay and Egyptian men who do identify as gay: Massad suggests we should not worry for the first group because their homosexual practices are an "authentic" cultural habit of the Arab world and are thus not subject to harassment. The latter group, however, appears to be interpreted by Massad as seeking persecution because of their provocative choice of adopting a "Western" conception of gay identity. Thus, their hassassment is not the result of any sexual deviance, per se, but rather the outcome of cultural transgression -- the product of "choosing" to import or impose in the Arab world some Western gay way of life.
It is very sad, in the end, to feel that Massad, in the name of a political resistance against western hegemony, is not able to understand and support the internal logics of sexual resistance that happen within what he likes to think of as a united, coherent, Arab World. The documentary by Parvez Sharma entitled A Jihad for Love about the Islamic faith of Arabic homosexual people living in the Arab World is a relevant illustration of the plurality of interpretation of the Koran and of the plurality of lifestyles that result from these interpretations. Massad's distinction seems rather Manichean: there is not on one side a Arabic correct and discreet homosexuality, and on the other side an imported, neo colonial western homosexuality.
The title of my post, "Join the homosexual intifada!" is a reference and a tribute to a political porn movie by Bruce LaBruce, The Raspberry Reich, which provocatively articulates in how, in Western societies, extreme left revolutionary activists struggled to understand that to defeat the capitalist system, they had to promote a political Revolution that was also a sexual liberation. When in 1970 Jean Genet visited Palestinian activists in refugee camps, they knew he was openly gay but welcomed him with hospitality and gratitude for his political commitments. In an interview, Jean Genet went as far as saying that he was on the side of Palestinians because of his sexual fetishism for Arabic men. He was, against his own country, in favor of Algerian independence and his grave can be found, today, in a beautiful village in Morocco. What I have in mind, when I think of an expression like the "homosexual intifada", is the political and emotional connections that can happen between queers from both Western and Arab societies. Desiring Arabs, indeed!
After a long separation, Scott and I are finally back together for a new episode of "The View From the Bottom"! We filmed this gem in Central Park, whilst visiting the Big Apple last weekend. We talk about sex in nature, food in bed, "straight acting," and other annoying online profile habits. Enjoy!!!!
My new friend Chris Barlett--mutual friend of Trevor's--is a professional gay rights activist in the Philadelphia area. Here is an amazing talk he gave recently about a website he created to document the histories of gay men in Philadelphia. Many thanks to Chris for cultivating our sense of gay history and community, which is all too often fragile and of such recent vintage.
Also, Chris, you probably shouldn't ever sing Ethel Merman again (see end of video).
Oh the many ways gay men have devised to say "no fats!" The latest phrase to rise to prominence is "height / weight proportionate" (or "hwp" as its abbreviated -- see above) -- which is a curious expression indeed. What exactly does it mean to be height / weight proportionate? And why has it quickly become the preferred alternative to "in shape"; "fit"; "active"; etc? A few thoughts.
Describing the kind of bodies that turn you on is not always such an easy task. Our language is somewhat imprecise. Anyone who's ever queried the meaning of a "swimmers build" is bound to see the vagaries that riddle online profiles. Indeed, we are tasked as gay men to choose a simple phrase to describe our body type from a list of options. For instance, Manhunt's options:
This list of options clearly does not come with a codebook. Deciding which to pick is in part about defining the way you identify and want others to identify you -- and not necessarily about attempting to accurately portray your body's shape / size / etc. Indeed, we see here that identity categories have woven their way into this set of options: Bear, Twink, and Cub are all suspicious here. They refer more to a cultural identity than they do to a particular body type (albeit, the two are closely related). For instance, Twink implies Slim -- yet the two are offered as separate categories. But perhaps it also implies hairless or smooth -- adding yet another layer of description implied here. It also implies young, which seems to be further off the mark in terms of what this drop-down menu is allegedly intended to describe. In any case, you can see the complexities and problems that arise here.
Since the advent of gay personals, gay men have come up with all sorts of ways to describe their own selves -- and the kind of men that they find hot. "No fats, no fems" was and still is a relatively common phrase found in profiles and ads looking for sex. But recently there has been a turn towards this curious phrase that is the subject of this blog post: Height / weight proportionate.
Let's presume that this means -- at least -- that there is a range of proportions between a person's height and weight, and that there is a subset of these ranges that is desirable. That seems clear. But isn't this a peculiar way to phrase this? I mean, anyone can be said to have a proportion between their height and weight. Are some of those proportions wrong?
Let's try this out. I am 69 inches tall, and weight 180 pounds. In other words, my height-to-weight ratio is about 0.38. I would consider myself in the "Average" body type range, whatever that means. Let's take another case -- a self-described "Body Builder" who looks damn stacked in his Manhunt pictures. Muscles on top of muscles. Presuming his reporting is accurate, he is 68 inches tall and weighs 185 pounds. His height-to-weight ratio is about 0.37. Does that somehow make his proportion worse? Better? You can see how silly this all becomes.
In the end, I think hwp rose to fame because of a combination of the exponentially escalating use of statistics when it comes to describe our bodies and our health (BMIs, etc). It connotes a kind of numerical preciseness that "Physically Fit" seems to lack. But as I hope I've made clear, it is no more precise. It's just as vague and nebulous a term as those that preceded it.
What's a more precise way to say what turns you on? If you're into lean guys, just say lean. It's very clear. If you're into guys with a lot of muscle, just say that. It may always be helpful to give examples, too. "Looking for guys built like David Beckham." Okay, so maybe that's a bit outrageous. But it's worth giving it a try. Because the problem with vague terms is not just that it makes it hard to read what you're into, but it makes the person considering responding to your ad double-guess whether or not he meets your requirements. Using more clear language helps entice those who fit your guidelines, and weed out those who don't. And -- for better or worse -- that's what profile-based hookup sites are all about.
There was a lot of buzz yesterday in my email inbox about the article I posted about gay masculinities. It's worth clarifying a few points:
1) I said that ToF is "highly stylized" -- but this is somewhat confusing in meaning. What I mean to say here is that it is more obvious as a performance of gender because it involves such elaborate costumes and "queer" rituals that to a hetero-eye are obvious signs of performance / difference / etc. This does NOT mean that A&F masculinity is any LESS stylized, it just means that A&F masculinity is able to present itself as more "natural" because it relies on a symbolic order that is highly hetero. Thus, guys taking it up are more able to believe it to be "the way they were born" -- even though it takes just as much effort to achieve. As I said yesterday: "Rather than the gruff, exaggerated masculinity stylized by Tom of Finland, this version was "All American" and seemed as natural and sensible as Apple Pie. Instead of collars and harnesses, it fetishized football gear and Aryan features. Indeed, it relied on a symbolic order that was not special to gay men's communities. The "sexy" found in "Abercrombie and Fitch" is just as hot to gay men as it is to heterosexuals."
2) The A&F moment is over. What I was trying to trace was a move from the 1970s to the 1990s. I would say that we need a new lens to understand why a kind of bear culture-informed masculinity has taken over as the dominant mode of gay masculinity. Bear culture was chewed up and spit out as something that looks very similar to the muscle-queen, but with added facial and body hair (and perhaps a bit more fat -- but not too much!). Now I want to note here that bear culture as it actually exists and the way bear culture has informed gay masculinity are two separate beasts. I think the fact that so many gay men have beards today is a reflection of bear culture's impact -- even though the guys with beards may not necessarily identify as such.
Hope that helps clarify quesions! THANKS for all your beautiful input over email, on Facebook, and here!
I want to propose a rather radical and highly contestable theory about Western gay men's communities. My idea is simple -- let me boil down what I'm going to say here to four main points:
1) AIDS was a cultural phenomenon and collective traumatic injury for gay men in the West;
2) AIDS emboldened the need to develop a political movement structured around an "equal rights" agenda. This agenda is founded on the idea that gays and lesbians were "born that way," and thus deserved sympathy and equality;
3) This political argument conflicted directly with 1970s versions of gay masculinity that were highly stylized, as embodied in Tom of Finland's art;
4) Thus, gay men increasingly turned to "naturalized" versions of masculinity, as embodied in the "Abercrombie and Fitch" catalogue
This is biting off more than I can chew in a blog entry -- but I wanted to get this idea into circulation for people to gnaw on for a bit. Let's begin with the obvious: Hasn't masculinity ALWAYS been a source of value in gay men's communities? The clear answer is yes, but I think this requires further examination. Let's begin with Exhibit A -- the masculinity so heralded in 1970s gay communities -- Tom of Finland (click to enlarge):
Tom of Finland created a cartoonish version of masculinity. It's blatantly ridiculous, and yet highly erotic. This is what made Tom of Finland's art so fantastic: It was both clearly hilarious in its outrageous spectacle, and at the same time extremely sexy for the way it exacerbated what gay men love about masculinity in men. It makes you both want to laugh and jerk off when you look at it.
Others have argued as I have here, that gay masculinity in the 1970s was more self-consciously performative in the way that I see masculinity being performed today. Today it is deadly serious. Manhunt'ers take their masculinity very seriously, thank you very much, and there's little reflexivity in the way that this gets performed. Sadly, there's no clip of it readily available online, but in the documentary Gay Sex in the 70s, there's a wonderful story from a gay man recounting a story from his bathhouse days of yore. He describes two men a few booths down from his loudly performing a kind of daddy-boy scene. I can't remember the specifics, but the dialogue went something like this:
Daddy: You wanna suck this dick, boy?
Boy: Yes!
Daddy: Yes, what?!?
Boy: Yes, mary!!!!!
He uses this example to argue similarly that masculinity in the 70s was regarded by gay men as highly performative, and full of humor. Today, I don't see that humor infused into the kind of Abercrombie-jock masculinity being circulated. Rather than being exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness, it is emulated as if it is "normal," "natural," and the opposite of "performative." We can imagine this by employing the word "butch," which is archaic today because I think it connotes a kind of cartoonish and exaggerated performance of masculinity.
Thus, rather than Tom of Finland, today I see Abercrombie as the symbolic representation of gay masculinity:
Now I want to be clear: Just because this brand of masculinity presents itself as "natural" does not mean that it is fact any less performative than the Tom of Finland version. Gender -- as I understand it -- is always performative in that we are reflexively socialized into it as a system of meaning-making. Let me take a moment to explain what I mean here:
1) I think it is uncontroversial to say that there are systems of social norms that pre-date our existence as individuals -- that the kinds of options for gender that exist are largely not up to us. I didn't choose to live in an era of Abercrombie and Fitch, for instance, nor could I magically erase that as a culturally central site of masculinity-production by way of will power.
2) Second, I think it is uncontroversial to also say that we are given throughout our lives instruction about what the appropriate uptake of these norms and practices is for us as men. This varies, without a doubt, by culture / class / etc., but the lifelong socialization process (something like indoctrination, but more diffuse) is I think largely a universal experience. This doesn't end when we turn 18 -- indeed, when we come out as gay men we begin to learn a whole different system of gender that operates within gay men's socio-sexual communities.
3) Finally, but while there are social structures that limit our options, of course we are individuals that have the ability to consciously resist, co-opt, or identify with these norms and practices. This is what sociologists call "agency."
So now that I have my theory of gender better explained, let's get back to my main argument: AIDS has deeply impacted the shift I have sketched from "Tom of Finland" to "Abercrombie and Fitch." I think that gay men pre-AIDS were more self-reflexive about issues like masculinity, power, and sex. I think these men were often more aware that the kind of leatherman masculinity so heralded in this time was clearly a performance that one worked hard to achieve.
It is precisely this sense of self-conscious performance that I think left this masculinity vulnerable in the face of the AIDS epidemic. What we saw in the era of AIDS was an effort to politically mobilize by arguing that gay men were born gay -- a naturalized argument for why gays and lesbians should be given equality. I don't think it was a coincidence that this argument rose to fame at the same time as AIDS. We needed heterosexuals to believe that we did not choose our sexual predilections, because if we did then AIDS was our punishment. But if being gay was the result of some biological origin, then perhaps we deserved legal equality and some protection under the law. At least this is how the logic functions. We couldn't help it, so please help fund prevention and treatment for this terrible disease that's killing us in droves.
Because of its self-reflexive performativity, leather "Tom of Finland" masculinity conflicts clearly here with this political agenda. It is full of costumes, exaggerated sexual scripts, and something more like performance art than biological destiny. Thus, gay men needed to turn to versions of masculinity that were "just like" heterosexuals -- that were styled to obscure the effort involved in creating and living them. "Abercrombie and Fitch" proved to be just such an image. Rather than the gruff, exaggerated masculinity stylized by Tom of Finland, this version was "All American" and seemed as natural and sensible as Apple Pie. Instead of collars and harnesses, it fetishized football gear and Aryan features. Indeed, it relied on a symbolic order that was not special to gay men's communities. The "sexy" found in "Abercrombie and Fitch" is just as hot to gay men as it is to heterosexuals.
This is hopefully someone's future dissertation, so please take this blog entry as an attempt to vocalize a series of *extremely* rough ideas. I'm curious to hear if others think this theory is as plausible as I do. Are there holes here that need filling? :)
It's time for another installment of The View from the Bottom, the vlog about Gay Men's Health and Sexualities as told from the perspective of two bottomless bottoms. For this show, Trevor invited Rostom to the podium to discuss whether the cock can "erase the face," hooking up with.. ahem... not so hung men, the love of cum, and anal beads. No fancy cocktails this time -- we were recovering from the previous evening's festivities. Instead, we opted for strawberry-flavored soy milk. Yum! Enjoy!
Thoroughly enjoying this Craigslist ad before bed:
Ahoy, Maties
I'm looking for a pirate who's ass I can plunder hard. If your a deck hand in need of a dick in hand, I'm your Captain, matey. I except hard, grunting work, good hand to hoist my jolly roger and a good tongue to mop my deck with.
Argh, if you think you're good enough for me to pillage, then come aboard my ship
or walk the plank
Argh! I except all hands on deck to dress and act like a pirate, Captain will ignore posts not speaking like a pirate, understand mates?!
It's time for another installment of "The View From the Bottom"! For this episode, I invited my friend Maxime to join me for an episode of French vs. American bottom-goodness. We dish about topping tops, whether dating men not into anal sex would be a deal-breaker, and romantic tropes in gay culture. And yes those are watermelons. We made very tasty cocktails from them. Enjoy his accent!
I was shocked last weekend in Chicago at the LGBTI Health Summit when I began to cry in the middle of a workshop. It was my fourth session of the summit, and I was feeling a bit worn thin from the weekend's intensity. Nevertheless, I did not anticipate the power of the emotions I felt as I described my anger and intensity over Public Health's treatment of gay men's sexualities.
The workshop was titled, "Destroying Public Health: for the Good of LGBT Health: Critique. Alternatives. Discussion," and was a collaboration between myself and Bill Jesdale. He was going to do a piece on risk, and I was going to do an analytic-polemic piece on the need to destroy Public Health. I had given a similar presentation before at an academic conference (audio; slides), then-titled "Resisting Public Health." But I felt the need to rev things up a bit, so I opted for a more loaded verb.
No more than an hour before the workshop was to begin, I was fiddling with my Powerpoint slides. There was something missing. I had the analysis down, but there wasn't the personal-emotional component that I knew was key to the argument I was making here. I wanted to make first a structural critique about the field of Public Health's epistemological reliance on Psychology and Epidemiology -- and the kind of knowledge that these fields were most apt to produce -- and I also wanted to make a structural critique about the field's normative grounding assumptions about sex, desire, and risk. But what was missing was the personal piece about how these structures made me feel as a gay man. What was the impact on my life?
So I typed away, working up a slide that I knew was polemical, but that was coming from a real place of hurt and anger. I wanted to own that anger, to share it publicly in a way that I had not done before. I didn't realize then how painful and upsetting it would be to actual talk about these feelings. Here's the slide in question (click to embiggen):
You can see what I mean by polemical. In any case, no sooner than I started describing the ways in which Public Health scholarship on crystal-meth addicted, HIV-infecting, depression-ridden gay men made me feel, tears started running down my face. I could barely go on speaking. I had never cried like this in public before -- the only time I had come close was when I delivered a memorial speech for Eric Rofes some years ago. But this was even more intense.
I expected to feel anger, but I was struck by how overwhelmed I was by my sadness. Sadness over knowing that it was gay male scholars much of the time who were producing the research and interventions that made me feel so dirty and shameful. Sadness that my gay brothers -- my friends, lovers, and fuck buddies -- were being painted as uncaring and untrustworthy monsters. Sadness over how much damage Public Health had done to gay men's sexual cultures in the name of promoting health. Sadness over not being able to ask Eric what to do or what he meant when he said that Public Health was a "colonizing" force in gay men's lives.
I still cannot get over the intensity of the emotions I felt in that moment. I took me at least 45 minutes to stop crying. I did not know the level of hurt that was living within me, slowly building over the years, waiting for a moment like this to reveal itself.
If anything, my painful experience of presenting this material reminds me just how much I need to continue aiming my critique at Public Health. I want to take the lens away from Gay Men, and point it back in the face of Public Health. To reveal the ways it is structured around homophobic, heternormative, and anti-sex assumptions about what is "good" and what is "bad."
My life is now, more than ever, committed to destroying Public Health.
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Pam's House Blend
She's a fabulous North Carolinian blogging about politics, LGBT and women's rights, the influence of the far Right, and race relations. What more can I say?
