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 21 
 on: October 14, 2007, 01:07:01 PM 
Started by Feral - Last post by berto
*Your* head pop?! Hells bells, that would make a mess, all that stuff comin' out -- I bet it's one'a those weird bigger-on-the-inside-than-it-is-on-the-outside thingies. (How ELSE could you cram that much stuff in there?)

 22 
 on: October 10, 2007, 11:47:27 AM 
Started by Feral - Last post by Rain
Quote
The Gays should re-embrace their historical culture, whatever went lost of it.

Assuming they know that there actually WAS a historic culture to learn.  To a huge part of younger Gays, Gay culture began with Madonna.

 23 
 on: October 10, 2007, 09:58:03 AM 
Started by Feral - Last post by vanrozenheim
Hm, where shall I start? Without reading the entire book it is difficult to discuss its value in terms of a real analysis of the past Gay culture.

If I were to judge the short excerpt published by NYT, I would say that Mr Harris' analysis of Gay past is somewhat tiresome to read, at least for me as a non-native English reader. His observations/interpretations of several phenomenons are very interesting, but I am not sure that he is accurate [in that one chapter] on the entire picture.

Of course, many homos of the time did elaborate their manners, but so they do now. We also must not mistake the few college-educated Gays with the entire homosexual population. Back in time (and in other places in our times, too) the working class homosexual men were often too much oppressed to come out even to themselves. They married, got children and led a totally straight life, maybe with the exception that they, from time to time, had sex with men. If we were to take those closeted Gay men into account, too, than the picture of the past wouldn't be as rosé as Mr Harris apparently depicts it. In average, the Gays in the West probably are as Gay as they never were before.

Quite a different thing is, that while the average behavious might be the Gayest ever, the extremes (both the proud and the closeted Gay) now are not that extreme anymore, since they have developed towards the "normality." This "normal behaviour" implicates that what previously used to be a closeted, psychotic homosexual man now evolves to a "discreet" and "decent" but non the less self-coscious and happy Gay man. The side effect is, unfortunately, that the social pressure on the "radical" Gays has increased to assume a socially permitted Gay lifestyle, with full social and economical "integration" offered as incentive. In short, it is possible nowadays to be openly Gay in Western societies without fearing immediate loss of the workplace and ostracism from family and neighbours -- provided, one adjusts oneselfe into the tight corsett of "decent" (=straight) behaviour.

Now it would be not that tragical, if this decent behaviour were only a cunning strategy to circumvent societies oppression -- but unfortunately, most Gays seemingly are nowadays entirely deluded into whole-heartedly embracing the assimilationist attitude. They really believe that there is but a last, tiny ditch of prejudice and bias to be rooted out, for the society to accept them, once and forever.

Need I say how foolish such an assimilationist attitude is? That mythical "last ditch of prejudice" amounts to some 40 to 50% of the population sharing belief that Gays are if not an abomination to God, so at least deeply immoral creatures engaging in disgusting sexual practices. This belief is so deeply rooted into the Abrahamic religions, that we simply can't eliminate it. The weed of hate uses to reclaim ground despite any weeding out, and there is little prospect of Gays winning over thousand-year-long traditions of hate and cultural genocide.

The Gays should re-embrace their historical culture, whatever went lost of it. Surely, not all of those mythical heroic national past (as constructed by Mr Harris) is really that glorious as he would like us to believe, but the ability to create and nurture an authentical Gay culture is essential for our further developement as a people.

 24 
 on: October 09, 2007, 03:23:16 PM 
Started by Feral - Last post by Feral
On a related front:  THIS.

Mmmmm. "Howl" can be heard here.

Personally, I've always preferred reading poetry to listening to it. You'd think that an author reading his own work would be ideal. I rarely find it to be though. I don't know why.

 25 
 on: October 09, 2007, 01:54:20 PM 
Started by vanrozenheim - Last post by Rain
Quote
Aging and Gay, and Facing Prejudice in Twilight

By JANE GROSS
Published: October 9, 2007



Even now, at 81 and with her memory beginning to fade, Gloria Donadello recalls her painful brush with bigotry at an assisted-living center in Santa Fe, N.M. Sitting with those she considered friends, “people were laughing and making certain kinds of comments, and I told them, ‘Please don’t do that, because I’m gay.’”


The result of her outspokenness, Ms. Donadello said, was swift and merciless. “Everyone looked horrified,” she said. No longer included in conversation or welcome at meals, she plunged into depression. Medication did not help. With her emotional health deteriorating, Ms. Donadello moved into an adult community nearby that caters to gay men and lesbians.

“I felt like I was a pariah,” she said, settled in her new home. “For me, it was a choice between life and death.”

Elderly gay people like Ms. Donadello, living in nursing homes or assisted-living centers or receiving home care, increasingly report that they have been disrespected, shunned or mistreated in ways that range from hurtful to deadly, even leading some to commit suicide.


Read.  You must have a NYT account to access the rest of this article!

 26 
 on: October 09, 2007, 01:39:16 PM 
Started by Feral - Last post by Rain
On a related front:  THIS.

 27 
 on: October 09, 2007, 09:14:14 AM 
Started by Feral - Last post by Rain
We should have tee-shirts made that state simply and boldly:  BE GAY.

 28 
 on: October 09, 2007, 07:53:16 AM 
Started by Feral - Last post by Feral
I've been browsing "reviews" and I came upon this --

Quote
I wished he would have pointed out more clearly how gay men can stop and fight against assimilation through building our culture which I think for any scholar is a very blurry answer.

Is it really that obscure a point that it must be made?

Assimilation is an active choice. Of course you may refrain from doing so. Of course you can. You just have to want to. "Building our own culture" sounds like such work, doesn't it? Someone should come up with a couch-potato's translation.

Be Gay. Having succeeded at that, be Gayer.

 29 
 on: October 09, 2007, 06:54:07 AM 
Started by vanrozenheim - Last post by Rain
Replace the BenGay with poppers and problem solved.

 30 
 on: October 09, 2007, 06:38:44 AM 
Started by Feral - Last post by Rain
Quote
In his shrewd and decidedly unsentimental style, Harris traces the gradual erosion, over the past 25 years, of an indigenous form of gay resistance suffused by campiness, bitchiness, and acerbic wit—an indigenous form of resistance, mind you, born not of an innate predisposition for swishiness but of social marginalization writ large. Says Harris, before gay liberation, gay men battled the psychic injuries of cultural disapprobation with refinement rather than legislation. In short, before they were activists, gay men simply had better taste.

My reasons for championing the causes of Polari and Faggish, precisely.  Those are tethers to a long historical past that had been maintained and passed down through generations.  At the core of each are nuggets of the bittersweet essence that has suffused Gay life.

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