I'm bringing Maxime, Rostom, and his husband Matthieu down to North Carolina for a good ol' Southern Thanksgiving tomorrow morning. We're making the long drive down for some finger-lickin', cranberry-sauced, stuffing-crammed, perfectly cooked turkey. Delicious! I even made an apple pie for the occasion!
Anyholler, we'll be filming an episode or two of "The View From the Bottom": Got any question for us on this Thanksigiving? :)
Hope you have a swell Thanksgiving wherever you are!
And the parallels to discourses on gay marriage are, well, very telling:
A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.
Neither Bardwell nor the couple immediately returned phone calls from The Associated Press. But Bardwell told the Daily Star of Hammond that he was not a racist.
"I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house," Bardwell said. "My main concern is for the children."
Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.
"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Bardwell said. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."
If he does an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.
A veeeeeeeeery interesting and useful visualization (click it to enlarge) of a set of public opinion polls fromFiveThirtyEight. Here's the background:
Jeff Lax and Justin Phillips put together a dataset using national opinion polls from 1994 through 2009 and analyzed several different opinion questions on gay rights. Here I'm going to talk about their estimates of state-by-state trends in support for gay marriage. In the past fifteen years, gay marriage has increased in popularity in all fifty states. No news there, but what was a surprise to me is where the largest changes have occurred. The popularity of gay marriage has increased fastest in the states where gay rights were already relatively popular in the 1990s. In 1995, support for gay marriage exceeded 30% in only six states: New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, and Vermont. In these states, support for gay marriage has increased by an average of almost 20 percentage points. In contrast, support has increased by less than 10 percentage points in the six states that in 1995 were most anti-gay-marriage--Utah, Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Idaho.
Not surprisingly, Utah is at the bottom of the barrel. I always wonder if the Mormons publicly trash gay marriage so much because they want to prove to America that they *really* believe in monogamous marriage. Mormons are in my mind a denigrated minority religious group in the United States, and their church's history of practicing bigamy is near the top of the list of reasons Americans are so suspicious of them. So it seems to me that gay marriage for them is a kind of whipping boy to prove to the rest of Americans that they're just as "normal" when it comes to relationships as any other red-blooded American. In any case, I think Utah is going to require a special kind of political strategy different from all the other states (whereas I think other states can be assessed almost regionally).
Other states of interest: Curious how far West Virginia has come in relation to the other states in its area, no? And look at New Jersey and Oregon! What's happened in these states that's so different from others? Examining that might provide some useful fodder for future campaigns in rather dismal-looking states like Arkansas and South Carolina.
Atlanta's gay rag, Southern Voice, has an article on bottom stigma! Well how fabulous! It's an interesting (if fairly short) piece that brings up a number of important issue. I like that they begin with a femme top's story who get's assumed to be a bottom because of his sissy gender performance, and interestingly a versatile guy who identifies as vers to avoid the stigma associated with bottoms:
Even in a city with a gay population as large as Atlanta’s, so many aspects of gay sexuality continue to be marginalized or derided. And although many gay men in Atlanta enjoy being penetrated during sex, the term “bottom” is often used as a slur the same way that “gay” is used on school playgrounds.
“They think you’re soft, or femme, or you don’t know how to use your dick,” said a 31-year-old Atlanta resident who asked to be identified as “Greg.”
“I know that’s not what all bottoms are, but that’s what people think,” said Greg, who is usually the receptive partner during anal sex, but doesn’t identify as a bottom. “I am versatile, and I do know how to use my dick, so I’m not lying. But saying I’m versatile might keep people from assuming all these other things about me, just because I like to get fucked.”
They also talk about intersections with race, and in particular how stigma around bottoming in African-American culture is particularly acute. It's provocative stuff! Read it!
President-elect Obama won North Carolina on Thursday, a symbolic triumph that underscored his political strength as he turned nine states that President Bush won in 2004 to Democratic blue.
The Associated Press declared Obama the winner after canvassing counties in North Carolina to determine the number of outstanding provisional ballots. That survey found that there are not enough remaining ballots for Republican John McCain to close a 13,693-vote deficit.
North Carolina's 15 electoral votes brings Obama's total to 364 -- nearly 100 more than necessary to win the White House -- to McCain's 162. Missouri is the only state that remains too close to call, with McCain leading by several thousand votes.
I'm really quite shocked. I was worried over reports from the South over longtimer Democratic voters switching for McCain because Obama's Black. And by reports, I mean my grandmother telling me she intended to do just that. Bless her heart. But Obama has triumphed! And I'm so thrilled! YEA North Carolina!!!!!!!!
Now it's one thing to say that North Carolina, Ohio, and Colorado are going Blue this November. It is quite a-fucking-nother to say the same for West Virginia Holy Canoli! Notice that since I last posted Pollster's Electoral map, Pennsylvania has gone dark blue. A reader commented and pointed me to the website FiveThirtyEight, which is a political statistician's jerk-off fest. Check out these tidbits, for instance:
Trevor in costume as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet (11th Grade)
I was interviewed for a documentary about gay male culture and masculinity, and afterwards the filmmaker requested that I try to dig up some old photos of me for the project. It was perfect timing, as I was interviewed last week just before I was to fly home to North Carolina for a day before my cousin's wedding (more on that in a future post!). I dug through my parent's dozens of photo albums and came up with these gems. My BFF Karen from high school (the nurse in R&J above, to my right, and who accompanied me to junior prom) also donated a few to the cause. I couldn't help but share!
Following on the heels of my last post on the racial diversity of online profiles in San Francisco on Manhunt and Adam4Adam, I bring you the Atlanta edition -- hot off the presses! I wanted to move away from San Francisco and find a major metropolitan area in which the majority ethnic group was non-white. Atlanta is a good fit -- as you'll see below, the city is majority-Black.
Given this shift in demographics, I was interested to see if the same patterns would arise on the websites as I described in my last post -- namely, that the racial diversity of online profiles declines to near-zero as their reported age increases. As I said last time, caution is urged: profiles are not people! Keep that in mind. The data below was collected from the 27,348 profiles on Adam4Adam, and 8,634 profiles on Manhunt that were listed in Atlanta Metro. Let's begin with some overall demographics.
Overview: ATL versus Manhunt versus Adam4Adam
Over 60% of Atlanta's population is Black, while just around one-third are white (source). This makes Atlanta one of the very few major metro areas in the country that are majority-Black. As you can see in the graph below, there are very small Latino and Asian-Pacific Islander communities -- the city is mostly Black and White:
Atlanta General Population:
And -- just as I mentioned last time -- measuring what the demographics of Atlanta's gay/bi/queer/MSM male population is very difficult. We'll again take a leap of faith here and say that we would expect that the men who have sex with men in Atlanta are probably racially distributed along similar lines to the city's general population.
Let's begin with Manhunt. As I indicated last time, Manhunt seems to appeal to a largely white population. You'll remember that in San Francisco, where there are strong API and Latino communities, over 70% of Manhunt profiles were white. In Atlanta, that trend continues, but is even more extreme. While over 60% of Atlanta's population is Black, only 8% of Manhunt profiles were listed as such. A whopping 81.5% of profiles were white:
Manhunt Atlanta Profiles Racial Demographics:
While the over-representation of white profiles in San Francisco didn't particularly surprise me, I found the gross under-representation of Black Manhunt profiles in Atlanta pretty shocking. Wowzer! It's pretty extreme, and is a strong indicator of how different websites can form totally different sexual ecologies. In contrast, as I indicated last time, Adam4Adam (A4A) has a history of being a predominantly African-American website in many cities. Because of this, I expected A4A in Atlanta to be absolutely brimming with Black guys -- especially after seeing how white the profiles were on Manhunt. I was actually surprised to find that the percentage of profiles that were listed as Black on Adam4Adam (62.2%) was nearly identical to the city's demographics (61.4%):
Adam4Adam Atlanta Profiles Racial Demographics:
Like I mentioned last time, many folks in the "Other" category would probably be counted as Black in a census. There seems to be a curious trend among younger African-American guys on Adam4Adam opting to identify as "Mix" instead of "Black." I'll talk about that more later in the section on age.
Race and Age: Age Goes Up, Diversity Goes Down
Last time, I was really shocked to find that in San Francisco, the racial diversity of profiles among age groups decreased dramatically as age went up. I still don't have access to general population data for Atlanta that crosses age with race. But I still would expect that racial diversity does not shift all that much across age groups -- though it certainly probably does to some extent. Increased mortality among African-Americans due to the higher rates of poverty / homelessness / access to health care / etc surely have an impact in Atlanta.
But -- just as last time -- the shift in diversity on these sites as age increases is too dramatic to be explained by those kinds of trends. Let's start with Manhunt. As you'll see below, in the 18-21 year old age group, well over two-thirds of the profiles on Manhunt are labeled as white -- already white folks over over-represented. By the time you reach the 34-37 age group, that number has gone up to over 80%. The oldest age group is almost 95% white:
Percentage of White Profiles in Atlanta on Manhunt, By Age Group:
I've separated the data for "profiles of color" into a second graph, since their numbers are so low that including them in the same graph would make it difficult to see their numbers. As you can see, while 16% of the profiles in the 18-21 age group are labeled as Black, that percentage quickly declines as age increases:
Percentage of "Profiles of Color" in Atlanta on Manhunt, By Age Group:
I expected this shift to be less dramatic on Adam4Adam -- since they had a larger percentage of "profiles of color" overall. Yet, while the representations of African-American profiles is much stronger on Adam4Adam (and overall in line with the city's demographics), I found yet again evidence of declining racial diversity. As you can see, there is almost a perfect inverse relationship between Black and White profiles in Atlanta -- it's kind of amazing.
Percentage of Profile's Ethnicity on A4A, By Age Group:
If you look at the raw numbers of Black and White profiles by age group, you can get a better picture for what's happening here. The raw numbers of white profiles continues to climb until it peaks at the 38-41 age group. In contrast, the raw numbers of black profiles peaks in the 26-29 age group. It seems possible that white MSM may actually be getting online to look for sex later in life -- which seems totally counter intuitive. But that's a stretch of a conclusion from the data given. You'd need a longitudinal study to show that, where you follow the same folks over time. But take a look:
Raw Number of Black, White Profiles on A4A, By Age Group:
Curiously, while the numbers are totally out of sync for most age groups, they align and drop in similar numbers after the 42-45 age group.
Conclusions
As I said last time, it's hard to draw any conclusions from this data. What surprises me perhaps the most is that I found evidence again of the trend of declining racial diversity as age increases in a city that's majority-Black. Research is desperately needed to understand exactly what's happening here!
Oh yes. That's right. Senator Dole has asked that a bill funding HIV prevention efforts globally be renamed after the one, the only Jesse Helms. That dirtbag bigot who finally kicked the bucket a few weeks ago.
Jesse Helms, the man who in 1987 described AIDS prevention literature as "so obscene, so revolting, I may throw up."
Jesse Helms, the man who in 1988 vigorously opposed the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS research bill, saying, "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy."
Jesse Helms, the man who in 1995 said (in opposition to refunding the Ryan White Act) that the government should spend less on people with AIDS because they got sick due to their "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."
Jesse Helms, the man who in 2002 announced that he'd changed his mind about AIDS funding for Africa, but not for American gays, because homosexuality "is the primary cause of the doubling and redoubling of AIDS cases in the United States."
Many people hold Ronald Reagan responsible for adding to the early AIDS death toll by his inaction on the pandemic, but it was Helms' actions in thwarting early research that inarguably hastened the demise of many thousands of Americans. How many of my friends, of your friends, would be alive today if the life-saving medications had arrived just one fucking year earlier?
Fuck YOU, Senator Dole. Fuck you with something hard and sandpapery.
I should know -- I was born there! Via Joe. My. God.:
South Carolina’s top tourism agency has canceled an overseas advertising campaign targeting gay tourists. The campaign, tied to gay pride week celebrations in London, included ads that proclaimed “South Carolina is so gay.” A handful of other U.S. destinations joined the campaign, including Atlanta, Boston and New Orleans.
After learning last week the state had agreed to spend tax money on the campaign — and spurred by a post on The Palmetto Scoop blog — the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism said Thursday it would not pay the tour operator.
I mean, has anyone seen Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil? Okay okay -- so that was Atlanta. But anyone who's from the South knows -- it's a pretty campy place to be! My family and I were just talking about this last night. I'm currently visiting North Carolina with my family; we're about 30 minutes from the South Carolina coastline at Ocean Isle Beach, NC. My mom and her two sisters were telling me about their uncle (and my great uncle) who they only knew as "Butterball" (they have no idea what his real name was) -- who used to always give them butterscotch! You can't make that shit up! If you don't believe me, check out the movie Sordid Lives.
Finally, episode 2 is up! Hop on over to The Gayest Podcast in Michigan homepage to check out the first part of a two-part interview with my dear friend Troy Wood, featuring his reflections on gay life in North Carolina, moving to San Francisco, and about building communities and friendships with gay men. It's fabulous. Download the shit out of it. Or subscribe on iTunes!
Police video that was recorded on Feb. 12 shows transsexual Duanna Johnson in the booking area at the Memphis Police Department after an arrest on prostitution charges.
Surveillance video shows an officer walk over and hit her in the face several times.
The policeman was heckling Johnson, calling her "he/she" and a "faggot," and she replied by telling him that "that wasn't my name. My mother didn't name me a faggot or a he/she." Basically, she doesn't take any flack from the police -- good for her. But it turned sour when the policeman came around the desk and started beating her. A jail nurse apparently walked past Johnson after she was beaten without offering her help. There's video footage (warning: obviously violent) posted on the news article.
Repercussions were swift but mild at the start. The officer, James Swain, was fired. Another officer was put on desk duty. An "internal investigation" has begun. But does anything ever come from internal investigations post-police brutality? Call me cynical, but we've all seen too many cases of fucked up treatment like this by the police -- even *murder* -- without so much as a slap on the wrist. Let's hope that this case is different.
Sadly, transgender women of color -- particularly those that are homeless and/or engage in sex work -- are often the target of violence today. It wasn't long ago that the body of Ruby Rodriguez was found near a freeway off-ramp in San Francisco. No arrests were ever made in the case, as far as I know. And before that, of course, there was Gwen Araujo.
I remember first realizing this kind of targeted violence while attending the LGBT youth group in my hometown of Charlotte, NC. A transgender woman named Cocoa attended regularly, and she had a large scar that ran across her neck. I found out later that a client slit her throat and left her for dead. Luckily -- miraculously -- she survived the attack.
As long as they are viewed as being less than human, we can expect these kind of horrific attacks to continue.
A seventeen year old in the United Kingdom has launched a new web campaign titled "Ditch the Label," which encourages young people to abandon social identity categories such as race, gender, and sexuality. How very 1990s queer theory of him. I have to say, I'm tired of this kind of postmodern anti-identity "politics." Don't get me wrong -- the intentions are in the right place. No doubt about that. But I would argue that this kind of politics is deeply neoliberal (read: individualistic) and riddled with problems.
Let me explain a little bit. When I say postmodern / neoliberal, what I am referring here to is the kind of language that movements like this use which reject any notion that groups of people may share anything in common at all. "Ditch the Label," for instance, says "we believe that you are unique and that one, two or even three idiotic social labels... cannot define your entire personality." Like, duh! Since when did identity-based movements claim that to be gay you must be EXACTLY one way. I know plenty of different kinds of gay communities that promote / tolerate / support doing very different ways of being gay.
The idea that we should all just abandon these identities flies in the face of the reality that, for many of us, we find great utility / joy / support from these identities and the communities they can bring. Everyone *loves* to complain about gay or black or woman as being bogged down by "baggage," but as I've blogged about before, no one ever acknowledges that "baggage" isn't just a burden we carry around with us, but also a potential toolkit from which we can draw. Identities are of course constructed - but they are also constantly in flux - and open to reinterpretation and movement. Just think about the bear movement, which has totally reshaped the possibilities for what "gay" looks like.
I will certainly agree that our communities are often formed out of a shared sense of isolation / marginalization / prejudice. And certainly as we win more battles, that shared experience will (and has already) become much more diffuse. I think that this is obviously reflected in some of the gay teens I talk to today who aren't as inclined to be a part of any "gay community." I think this makes sense. But to me this is a contextual issue, and will become increasingly disparate between people who live in more tolerant communities and people who live in more hostile communities (think teens growing up in South Carolina versus teens growing up in the Bay Area). Thus, we can expect some variation in people's "need" for "gay" and "lesbian" and the resources they bring. I haven't fleshed these ideas out as much as I'd like to yet, though. Anyone have ideas?
Thanks to Fred for passing this along via Joe. My. God.!
I had the pleasure and honor to attend a performance last night by E Patrick Johnson from his forthcoming book, Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Tales. "Pouring tea" in black gay southern circles is an expression for dishing gossip, and his performance strings together several narratives from black gay men in the South that he collected between 2004 and 2006. The men he interviewed were between the ages of 19 and 93 and from fifteen different states. I was homesick for most of the performance, with several of his guys hailing from or mentioning North Carolina!
The eight narratives, each built around a core theme ("Religion," "Being Transgendered," "Being Gay in the South," "Coming Out," "Sex," "Coming of Age in the 1920s and 30s," "Masculinity and Peer Pressure," and "Being a Southern Diva"), began first with a short audio clip directly from Johnson's interview with them. He would then perform -- word for word (including "ums" and "ahs"), we're told -- a segment of that interview. It was gorgeous! What complicated and fabulously intriguing stories were told.
I was struck by the resiliency in the narratives he performed, and so at the reception following the event I asked him about just that. He said that he had interviewed some 70 guys (I can't recall the exact number), and that resiliency was not a theme consistent accross all the narratives -- but that those were the stories that he wanted to perform. And it paid off!
The book is forthcoming. You must find it and a purchase it when it comes out!!! He'll be launching the book at UNC Chapel Hill. Sigh. Wish I could be there.
I was at Orphan Andy's today, the diner in the Castro where my roommate and our mutual friend Jeff works, and we got into a somewhat heated discussion about the tension between the desire to create and nuture gay male communities vs. the desire to create and nuture radical social justice movements. Can we engage in the process of building identity-based communities while also hoping to build a politics that moves beyond identity categories?
This tension is somewhat difficult for me to navigate. As a young man who came out as gay in the South, the marginalized experience I had there created my own radically queer political perspective. That is to say, because I was nelly boy in a deeply and often blatantly heterosexist culture, I was radicalized politically from an early age.
Now I live in San Francisco, however, where being gay is no longer radical. It has lost almost all potential to produce an interesting or transformative political consciousness - especially for wealthy white gay men. Perhaps this is not true for men of color; the poor; and gay/bi/queer women. But, for gay men, the potential to create subversive and radical politics here is largely dead.
I have long been hoping to see a new radical politics emerge that sat at the crossroads of racial justice / feminist / and queer political discourses. That is, a movement that was just as interested in tackling racist and sexist prejudices and inequalities as it was in ending heterosexist / homophobic ones. This kind of organizing has begun to emerge in places like the South, where organizations like Southeners on New Ground (formerly headed by Mandy Carter) and Tennesee's Highlander Institute (formerly headed by Suzanne Pharr) have long been pushing for this vision of radical political organizing.
The tension, then, is how to move forward as a activist and organizer hoping to build healthier and politically conscious gay men's communities, while also hoping to build a multi-issue justice movement. Is such a thing possible? My growing up in the South as a gay man has made me attached to my gay identity and my gay brothers in a way that prevents me from dropping my hope for doing gay men's community building. I think there are still places where this can produce radical and feminist consciousnesses - as it has clearly done for me.
Are these projects necessarily seperate? Must I choose between them, or can I find someway to further both agendas? These are the questions that are on my mind, and have been for some time now... Any ideas?
1
About Us Trevorade is a community of people just like you who spend their days thinking about sex, gay men's health, and HIV/AIDS. Welcome!
We Need Your Support We're supported almost exclusively by donations from generous souls like yourself. So please, if you enjoy the content here, shell out a few gay dollars to help us cover our hosting bills.
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?
I had the pleasure and honor to attend a performance last night by 
