Blog Posts View all
The Rituals of Revival
By Sarah Drepaul
This is what distinguishes the festival from other queer art performances, at least in the U.S.: it is not afraid to understand and showcase queerness in all the ways it impacts us.
Queerbaiting History: Maestro and Fellow Travelers (Part Two)
By Jonathan Alexander
I didn’t realize at first that this series, especially when seen alongside Maestro, actually epitomizes queerbaiting: it titillates with the specter of gay sex while ultimately punishing the faggots.
Queerbaiting History: Maestro and Fellow Travelers (Part One)
By Jonathan Alexander
Both of these shows also offer us portraits of queer life and love amidst the homophobia of the mid to late twentieth century. But as I watched and thought about the film and series, I came to feel more and more…baited — queerbaited by the representation of our own history.
Here's My Story View all
Oy Vey and Gay
By Chef Rossi
Being a bisexual rocker chick suited my image, but still, there were all those pesky penises to contend with. At first, I thought, “Maybe I just don’t like nice Jewish boys.”
An Unconventional Coming Out
By Thomasin Lockwood
I frequently thought of women, but could barely admit it to myself, let alone go out and explore it. A drunk make out with a female colleague was as far as I went.
The Straight Men that Made Me Gay
By Gregory Walters
I grew up at a time when there weren’t any visible or out homosexuals. Liberace had stated under oath he wasn’t gay. Elton John was married to a woman, Paul Lynde was a harmless, snarky coot on Hollywood Squares, and Charles Nelson Reilly, a regular on Match Game, just seemed kooky.
Book Reviews
Buried in Foreign Soil
WILD GEESE by Soula Emmanuel Footnote Press. 240 pages, $17.95 THE TITLE of Soula Emmanuel’s debut novel conjures images of migratory birds in flight. And yet, the author informs us that the name derives from a time in Irish history when men left Ireland to serve as mercenary soldiers in continental Europe during thoseMore
How ‘Gender’ Became a Scare Word
Butler begins Who’s Afraid of Gender? with an overview of global “anti-gender” efforts by conservative religious figures and groups from Evangelical pastor Scott Lively’s work in Africa and Spain’s CitizenGo to authoritarian-minded politicians like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has called “gender ideology” a threat to the nation itself.
Annual Queries
THIS LATEST COMPILATION from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (clags), one of the LGBTQ community’s most august academic bodies, presents seventeen lectures by the organization’s annual recipients of the David R. Kessler Award, a prestigious honor bestowed on a person whose work has significantly contributed to the field of LGBT studies.
The Many Ways to Wreck a Life
Edward Cahill’s novel Disorderly Men begins with just such a police raid on the fictional Caesar’s bar in New York’s Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. In the midst of the raid, we meet the sundry patrons whose lives Cahill portrays in the novel. Roger Moorhouse is a 39-year-old closeted gay man, an ex-fighter pilot who served in the Pacific during World War II.
How Not to Become a Commodity
BRAD GOOCH is an accomplished memoirist, novelist, and biographer of such literary figures as Rumi, Flannery O’Connor, and Frank O’Hara. His latest book is a compelling analysis of the remarkable legacy of artist Keith Haring.
In Dialog with a Playwright
DURING HIS LIFETIME, Terrence McNally saw seventeen of his plays and musicals premiere on Broadway, and along the way he developed a tenacity and maintained a relevance that has eluded most American playwrights in their later years. Conversations with Terrence McNally, edited by Raymond-Jean Frontain, helps to illuminate a writer whose work has not always shown up on the literary radar of critics and tastemakers.