hunter of justice

Human rights, sexuality and gender in the Middle East

I'm a big fan of Scott Long, the lgbt rights division director at Human Rights Watch. Following is an excerpt of an interview he did with Rex Wockner. This portion focuses on the Middle East; the full interview is here.

The stuff we saw in Iraq, the killing campaign this year, is a very extreme version of what we’ve seen in other places in the Middle East, which is, you suddenly get basically a moral panic around the issue of homosexuality where a lot of other social anxieties about, you know, westernization, social change, change in gender roles, masculinity, they all get wrapped up into one issue and somebody’s scapegoated, someone is targeted. The Queen Boat arrests in Egypt were very much like that, in that all of these fears about rock music and Satanism and heavy metal and effeminate men and long hair suddenly got transmuted into the issue of homosexuality. And we’ve seen kind of smaller eruptions like that in places from Morocco to Turkey over the last few years. It is very complex because it is connected to the reality of very swift social change that people find unsettling, in many cases terrifying. It’s connected to the reality of westernization and of very swift and unsettling economic changes as well. I mean, the anxieties behind it are real.

The scapegoat is fictional, but the people who suffer are also real, and I think, you know, what we need across the Middle East is not just LGBT movements who are capable of responding to this—that will take a long time—but we need a stronger commitment from mainstream human rights organizations to fight moral panics and to stand up for the human rights even of the most marginalized, stigmatized people in the community....

In both Iraq and Uganda, I think the fears and the violence of the response—the kind of legal violence that’s being proposed in Uganda and the really literal violence in Iraq—are certainly enabled by a long history of violence and social collapse. You know, Uganda has gone through 25 or 30 years of civil war. You can stand in Kampala and it looks like a beautiful, placid, just lovely place, and then you remember what’s happened to many of the people walking by you on the street in the last two decades, and you remember the civil war that’s still raging in the north, and you realize how much fear there is underneath the surface. And I think the Museveni government has been actually very clever at focusing all of people’s anxieties on homosexuality as kind of the universal target and the universal scapegoat.

In Iraq, it’s quite true that homosexuals were never particularly targeted under the Saddam regime. He had other enemies. But to the other enemies, he was absolutely brutal. ... The sanctions, and then the just-total U.S.-induced collapse of security after the invasion, have created an environment where everybody lives in anticipation of violence and where everybody feels that being ready to be violent yourself is the only safeguard. And the militias, the Mahdi Army, are the product of that—they’re a bunch of young men who see no future for themselves and whose only social role that they can imagine for themselves if they don’t have jobs, they don’t have stable family structures, they don’t have stable lives, the only role they can imagine for themselves is enforcing some imaginary version of morality. So I think the circumstances are somewhat special, but, you know, these very deep-rooted fears about sexuality, sexual difference, gender—I really think the issue of, you know, what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman are at the core of much of this homophobic violence as much as people’s kind of fantasies about what other folks are doing in bed.

These fears are not just limited to Iraq and Uganda; you see them everywhere. I mean, the trans folks who get beaten up on the streets of New York are facing the same kinds of fears in a different version. It’s just that you have certain social situations which allow them complete sway....

BDSM case goes to Supreme Court

by guest blogger Harper Jean Tobin

The US Supreme Court recently agreed to hear a case involving the seemingly technical but highly important question of when a criminal conviction can be overturned based on the possibility that it was based on conduct that occurred before any law made it illegal. While the case is already generating headlines, you are not likely to hear a great deal about the Ex Post Facto Clause issue at the heart of the appeal. Instead, media coverage has and presumably will continue to focus on the involvement of both the defendant and the complainant in the case in the BDSM subculture.

The prosecution and conviction in United States v. Marcus shocked many people, not least members of the BDSM (bondage/discipline, domination/submission, and sadomasochism) community, who alternately condemned the defendant for violating the moral standards of the community and worried that they too could be at risk. Glenn Marcus and the woman identified in court records only as Jodi met in 1998 and began what the prosecution conceded was initially a consensual “Master/slave” relationship. A year later, however (the State contended), the relationship became non-consensual because of Marcus’s cruelty and threats, and Jodi was blackmailed into remaining in the relationship by his threats of showing explicit photos of their activities to Jodi’s family. Marcus’s defense vigorously contested the charges, which turned on Jodi’s testimony that she withdrew her consent and only continued the relationship out of fear. Marcus was convicted of forced labor and sex trafficking under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, based on Marcus’s sexual and BDSM activities with Jodi and on forcing Jodi to work on maintaining his BDSM website.

The Second Circuit overturned Marcus’s convictions (538 F.3d 97), saying that because the government built its case largely on events that occurred before the TVPA’s enactment, and the trial judge failed to instruct the jury on the matter, it was at least possible that the verdict was based conduct that was not a federal crime when it occurred. (Notably, then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote a concurring opinion suggesting that the relevant circuit precedents were at odds with Supreme Court precedent. Sotomayor has now recused herself from the case.) Accordingly, Marcus was entitled to a new trial, focusing exclusively on whether Marcus coerced and abused Jodi in late 2000 and 2001. The Supreme Court will now decide whether a conviction can be reversed based only on a possibility, as opposed to a likelihood, that it was based on pre-enactment conduct, and thus whether the new trial will proceed.  Although it is the Court’s job to focus on the specific legal questions presented to it, some members of the Court will likely be unable to resist delving into the morality and legality of BDSM. The legal arguments and media coverage of the case, therefore, should be digested with the following in mind:

Marcus’s conviction turned on the question of consent. Marcus’s defense has contended throughout that he has been imprisoned for consensual BDSM activities, and that Jodi, on whose testimony the whole case hinged, brought a false case to prosecutors, long after the fact, because of a dispute over pictures of her on Marcus’s website. By contrast, the prosecution contended that this was a case about a relationship that began consensually but turned into something different and criminal. At the urging of the defense, the court’s jury instructions specified that the terms “physical restraint,” “threats of serious harm,” “force” and “coercion” in the federal statute must be interpreted so as to exclude consensual BDSM conduct. 487 F.Supp.2d 289 (E.D.N.Y. 2007). While the very idea of consensual BDSM, and the distinction between a consensual “Master/slave” relationship and actual captivity and abuse, may have been difficult for jurors to comprehend, the jury convicted Marcus in light of these instructions and the trial court found the evidence sufficient to uphold the verdict in light of this interpretation of the law. Marcus has not challenged the sufficiency of the evidence on appeal, and accordingly the factual question of consent is now closed, as far as the courts are concerned.

The most sensationalized facts of the case actually involved consensual activity. Jury instructions notwithstanding, the prosecution and the press certainly capitalized on every available detail to paint a picture of a depraved abuser. In particular, press accounts emphasized that Marcus whipped Jodi, cut the word “slave” onto her stomach with a knife, shaved her head and branded her with his initial. However, Jodi testified and the government conceded that these activities were consensual, occurring before she moved to Maryland to be closer to Marcus and months before she became afraid and wanted to leave him. While cutting and branding may seem extreme to some, there is nothing inherently abusive about these activities. What shows Marcus to be an abuser and a criminal, if that is what he is, is not the physical things he did but that did them through force and coercion rather than mutual consent.

From the start, Marcus crossed lines within the BDSM community. Though Marcus has been publicly defended by personal friends in the BDSM community, the community as a whole has been ambivalent toward the case. Marcus’s approach to M/s relationships, as detailed in the trial record, included notions of “consensual non-consent” and “no-limits submission” that are controversial within the community. That is, Marcus made it known that once a woman had committed to his service, he would ignore her objections to specific activities or requests to leave. According to the trial record, Marcus used threats of blackmail to manipulate Jodi, and at one point instructed Jodi to entice her sister to visit and to drug her so Marcus could rape her (she refused). Some community members have suggested that the Marcus case may illustrate the legal boundaries of responsible BDSM, with “safe, sane and consensual” BDSM clearly protected by the law, and practitioners of “consensual non-consent” acting at their own risk.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in United States v. Marcus (case no. 08-1341) early next year.

Queer and (in the) country

Following is an interview in Wiretap magazine
with Mary Gray, author of Out in the Country: Youth, Media and Queer Visibility in Rural America, a new book on rural gay life. The author, a professor in the Gender Studies Department at Indiana University, is doing readings this fall in New York, DC, San Francisco, Philadelphia and other locations; full schedule and details are here. Although not about legal issues,the discussion opens a window onto an aspect of lgbt political and social life about which little is known.

The advice given to queer and questioning youth by gay rights icon Harvey Milk was simple: Move to the nearest city. Why is this statement a disservice to queer rural youth?

This sentiment effectively tells rural LGBTQ-identifying youth they can't be happily queer right where they are and should expect -- perhaps deserve -- hostility if they do stay in their communities.

Many of the youth I met struggled with reconciling the deep connection or pride they feel for their hometowns with the popular representation of their communities as backward, ignorant and unlivable -- not just for queer folks, but for anyone with taste or class. They feel they're not supposed to see their communities as viable options, and are being told they need to choose between being queerly out of place in the country and moving to a big city to find legitimate visibility.

How does class affect the lives of LGBTQ folks in these areas?

Working class and poor rural communities require citizen solidarity to weather the neglect and marginalization from the nation-state. In this environment, LGBTQ people must be seen primarily as "locals" and risk too much advocating for their concerns as queer folks because familiarity, not difference, ensures one's access to basic necessities.

Beyond churches, there are few resources available in rural communities to cover these basics should one's family be unable or unwilling to provide them. The fact that rural queer youth feel they have to choose speaks to the assumption that queerness not only resides in urban settings, but only comes with social and economic mobility.

According to the 2000 Census, rural America is 82 percent white. How do queer people of color navigate their personal and political alliances in a space of overlapping marginalization?

Queer youth of color are doubly estranged and, if they openly identify as queer, have more to risk. While parallels drawn by white peers or allies between the civil rights and LGBTQ rights movements might help young people of color feel more connected to LGBTQ activism, this uncritical argument also creates dissonance. As one young African American man named Brandon noted, he could see the connections between the two movements, but ultimately felt a greater responsibility to be a leader among students of color because that's where his community was.

For Brandon, the internet introduced another layer to racial divisions. He went online to find other bi- or gay-identifying men in his region and found almost exclusively white men, some of whom spoke about their desire in ways that struck Brandon as incredibly racist. While Brandon still felt the internet was an important part of allowing him to feel his desire for other men was normal, it also demonstrated how hard it would be for him to synthesize his racial and sexual identities.

How is the internet used by rural queer youth to shape or reinforce one's own queer identification?

The internet's value to rural queer youth identification can't be understated, but its impact cuts both ways. The internet offers an opportunity to explore queer identifications and search for other youth in the area, but it also make things more difficult by homogenizing what LGBTQ life and people are like and erasing the rural from the picture of queer life.

The internet also gives ideas for organizing politically that have no viability in rural communities. A door-to-door voter registration drive for LGBTQ issues won't work in a place where people don't see LGBTQ issues as a local concern.

What should national organizations do to re-center rural queer youth needs in the larger gay rights movement?

We need to re-examine our assumption that rural places are endemically hostile to queer folks. The frequency of hate crimes in cities should signal to us that rural and urban spaces are differently [but] not more or less violent to queer people. Without rural communities and their LGBTQ constituents, national and statewide advocacy groups will be unable to advance basic civil rights issues on a national scale.

Assuming LGBTQ life necessarily improves through securing the right to marry without equally valuing, and in rural communities prioritizing, accessible LGBTQ-specific healthcare and job protections will do very little to change the lives of working class and poor rural LGBTQ youth. Anyone who thinks rural queer kids are just a wedding ring away from full citizenship and equality hasn't spent time looking for healthcare or a living wage in rural Appalachia.

Your research was rooted in uncovering best practices for rural queer youth organizing. What strategies did you find?

The importance of coalitional politics in rural communities and the need to prioritize the "localness" of an issue is crucial. In some cases, gay-straight alliances will work, but human dignity student clubs that address homophobia alongside other discrimination may work better to build community support. The argument that non-LGBTQ folks should care about LGBTQ issues like marriage equality because it's "the right thing to do" misses the complicated meaning of marriage and families to people who depend on those institutions for both material and symbolic support.

For more information, visit:

http://queercountry.fromthesquare.org/

Defending Semenya

From Bully Blogger, a superb analysis of the Caster Semenya gender panic:

By Tavia Nyong’o

World champion runner Caster Semenya returned to a hero’s welcome in her native South Africa last month, where the public denounced the “gender testing” she was forced to undergo after her gold medal in Berlin. Outraged by the racist and sexist comments of rivals who told journalists that you could tell she was  a man just by looking at her, the president of South African athletics, Leonard Chuene, resigned from the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF). “This girl has been castigated from day one, based on what?” he told the LA Times “You denounce my child as a boy when she’s a girl? If you did that to my child, I’d shoot you.”

South Africans aren’t the only ones angrily comparing Semenya’s treatment to that of Saartjie Baartman, the nineteenth-century Khoisan woman who was exhibited throughout Europe as a sexualized monstrosity. White audiences guffawed, prodded and poked at her exposed body, which they laughingly demeaned as that of a “Hottentot Venus”: the inverse of European standards of beauty. Challenging Semenya’s femaleness, people now assert, is imperialism all over again. Its an especially shameful and traumatic humiliation, they stress, for a teenager to experience. The South African newspaper, The Guardian and Mail wrote:

At 18, Caster Semenya is quite probably frightened and confused. Her dignity has been attacked, her profoundest sense of self laid bare with potentially damaging psychological consequences. But when she returns home, she seems assured of a special welcome from family and friends who have never sat in judgment on her nature. They have always accepted her simply as Caster, the girl who can outrun them all.

Her case is understandably upsetting, but I for one object to the manner in which Semenya is being spoken for and defended in passages above. Is it her defenders who are perhaps embarrassed and ashamed by her exuberant embodiment, more than her? Semenya, according to her family and friends, is a rough and tough tomboy who excels in sports, scorned skirts for trousers from the very beginning, and shrugged off teasing and bullying about her gender long before the issue exploded in Berlin. Young though she may be, who is to say Semenya cannot know and enjoy who she? Who is to say that her “profoundest sense of self” lies with being considered and treated like a “girl”?

If ever a case called for an intersectional analysis that included queer and trans perspectives, as well as anti-racist and anti-imperialist ones, this is it. Whether indignantly paternalistic, like Chuene, or more “liberally” expressing concern over a fragile, damaged psyche, like the Mail and Guardian, Semenya’s defenders are clearly dealing with a gender panic of their own.

And who wouldn’t be? World-class female athletes have long made people anxious, particularly gorgeously muscle-bound black ones. The splendor of their world, which a bystander like myself can only imagine, must be one in which conventional barriers of the body are left behind in the dust. In the name of protecting African femininity from a western, scientific gaze, Semenya’s defender also disguise their own patriarchal investment in naming and controlling this gender excess. But as her career already illustrates, such gender excess is hard to control.

As From a Left Wing writes, apropos of Semenya and of similar cases in women’s soccer:

What is it we are looking for in a women’s game? Surely not a confirmation of the “femininity” of the people on the pitch. It must be something else – like how the women’s game allows us to escape from narrow ideas about who and what women are. Why shouldn’t women’s football be exactly the game to welcome gender-bending warriors like the intersex athlete, and the transgender warrior?

The real challenge when an ugly, gender-disciplinary inquisition like the one the IAAF has started crops up is not to allow ourselves to be blackmailed into simplistic reassertions of gender normativity for the sake of the vulnerable child. Here Semenya herself leads the way, in her succint response to the ordered test:  “I don’t give a damn.” Instead of making her a traumatized symbol of a violated continent, how about adopting some of her contemporary, wordly pugnacity?

And instead of insisting upon the naturalness of her gender, how about turning the question around and denaturalizing the world of gender segregated, performance-obsessed, commercially-driven sports, a world that can neither seem to do with or without  excessive bodies like Semenya’s and their virtuosic performances?

The rush to compare Semenya to Saartjie Baartman, while obvious for nationalistic reasons, misses something crucial. Baartman was exhibited and castigated for what the imperialist eye took to be her abberant femininity. A better comparison here would be to the many trans bodies (like famed jazz pianist Billy Tipton right) who have been disciplined and punished for their female masculinity. As in Semenya’s case, female masculinity is often associated with forms of disguise and deceit (the stigma of “doping” and of South African Athletics perhaps trying to “pass off” a male runner as a woman is clearly relevant here). But it is also associated, and for related reasons, with the extraordinary. Runners like Semenya are as much virtuoso performers as are players like Tipton. And the virtuoso always risks being scapegoated as a freak, even as they exhibit a skill that is, in a sense, always already in all of us.

New structural intervention strategies for AIDS prevention emerging in San Francisco

The Stop AIDS Project in San Francisco has begun presenting initial findings from its Where study, which it undertook in conjunction with the University of California San Francisco, the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the California STD/HIV Prevention Training Center.

From Bay Area Reporter:

... [T]he Where study ... collected feedback from nearly 200 one-on-one conversations – mainly with local gay men – concerning different ways to improve the environments of local bars, sex clubs, and cruising Web sites to create an atmosphere more conducive to safer sex.

This approach to HIV and STD prevention, known as structural intervention, is pioneering in that it places an emphasis on making changes at high-risk venues as a means to reduce the number of infections. It's more common that prevention strategies focus on altering high-risk behavior of individuals, not places.

Eventual structural intervention programs may include creating easier access to free water in bars, promoting Web sites for "protected sex only," or providing wrist bracelets at sex clubs reflecting sexual preference, desired acts, positions, or HIV status. The Where study includes over 50 such suggestions, all of which will be further evaluated before any pilot programs are implemented.

Jen Hecht, education director at Stop AIDS, said that the concept of structural intervention has seen notable success on a larger scale. For example, seatbelt laws are considered a structural intervention, as are policies allowing the addition of fluoride to public tap water to prevent tooth decay. Hecht and her team members are focusing on local solutions that use the same concept; creating practices beneficial to a broad spectrum of the community, without increasing the burden placed on any individual.

"A guiding question for this project was what if we could reduce the chance of someone getting HIV or STDs without changing the frequency of condom usage?" Hecht told an audience of about 20 who gathered August 17 at the LGBT Community Center for the agency's community report on HIV data.

While Stop AIDS will continue running and developing its other programs, including those focusing on safer sex practices for individuals, the staff is introducing the new approach as a complement to these programs. Stop AIDS reported that it is the first organization of its kind to be conducting an expansive exploratory study of the concept.

"Structural interventions are not new in public health discourse, but they are new in HIV prevention," said Executive Director Kyriell Noon. "Given the fact that the number of new HIV infections in San Francisco appears to have reached a plateau, we need to do something different to effect change.

The miracle of rebranding: abstinence = health

By Jessica Valenti, from The Nation:

...[A]bstinence organizations are not going away. In fact, they're getting organized. Well aware that their cause is in trouble and unpopular, purity proponents are revamping their image to appear more mainstream. ...

One of the "Strategic Objectives" now listed on the National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA) website is "Rebranding the abstinence message." So when the NAEA met for its annual lobby day in March, high on the list of priorities was developing a strategy for continuing to receive federal dollars. Joe Sonka, managing editor of the Advocates for Youth blog Amplify, wrote of the lobby day, "Instead of abandoning their demonization of condoms and adherence to social conservative ideology over sound science, they would simply rebrand themselves as a curriculum that 'wasn't just about abstinence,' but was all about 'holistic approaches' to 'healthy lifestyle choices.'"

At an April 29 Capitol Hill briefing, [the head of the NAEA] told the room that abstinence-only education is "not a 'just say no' message." "This is not abstinence only, this is a holistic message that prepares and gives students all of the information they need to make healthy decisions," [she] said. In fact, the NAEA isn't even calling its programs "abstinence only" anymore--now they're "abstinence centered."

Similarly, WhyKnow--a major provider of abstinence-only education curriculums--recently changed its name to On Point, its tag line to "Direction for Life" and hired PR company Maycreate Idea Group to help recast its image. Lesley Scearce, executive director of On Point, said in an article for the Chattanoogan that the organization is trying to "get teens involved in new, positive directions that lead to a healthier, more fulfilling life. Without a re-naming, re-branding and re-positioning, this new direction wouldn't have been possible."...

The good news in all of this is President Obama's budget cutting most abstinence-only education funding and seeking to redirect the funds to "teen pregnancy prevention programs." The bad news is that 25 percent of the $164 million marked for teen pregnancy prevention would be open to abstinence-only programs, and the language in the budget doesn't make room for initiatives to curb sexually transmitted infections....

The science behind the ick factor

There's good news in the following tongue-in-cheek column on reactions to french kissing and other public displays of affection -- people can in fact get over it insofar as they are more bothered by observing the same behavior by same-sex couples than by straight couples. HT: Dana Rudolph at Bilerico.

By Jesse Bering, from Scientific American:

While walking through a park in Budapest a few weeks ago, I spied a very strange sight. In that fleeting moment between sensation and perception, when images settle on the retina but aren’t yet processed in a form fully accessible to conscious awareness, what I saw was a multicolored, gyrating mass of vaguely human substance, squirming and twisting on a park bench in animalistic fervor. My brain, unfortunately, was soon able to peel apart what I was actually observing, which was a particularly corpulent young woman devouring a young man half her size in what can only be described as a feast of open-mouthed, public lovemaking. The expression, “get a room,” seemed wholly inadequate for this carnal scene. “Get a porn studio” was more like it.

My partner, Juan, and I witnessed many other public displays of “affection” like this one during our stay in Budapest, which was curious enough from a cross-cultural perspective and a bit counterintuitive for such a socially conservative country like Hungary. It put me in an ethnographic state of mind. Suddenly I became acutely aware of the many American and British tourists who—if not quite as passionate as these lustful Magyars—were similarly expressing their attachments to their partners in, say, an arm casually draped around the shoulder, a hand held or a possessive grip on the waist. And that’s when the sad truth struck me: with the exception perhaps of just a handful of places in the world (and even those are questionable), gay couples are not free to participate in this most basic, mindless and normal exhibition of romantic behavior. In both the UK and the US, for example, I’ve got to first scout out who’s in our immediate vicinity before daring to even brush my pinky finger against Juan’s hand as we’re walking side-by-side. Compared to the issue of gay marriage, gaining equality in the “right” to display such innocent feelings of affection for one’s same-sex partner is an even greater hurdle for gay rights advocates—and, in many ways, it’s an even more important one. This is because recent findings indicate that changing negative attitudes toward gays begins not with education, per se, but instead with exposing people more regularly to same-sex romantic behavior.

... [Even people who would say, if asked, that it’s okay for gay people to kiss in public] nevertheless hold implicit negative attitudes on the subject. At least, that’s what Harvard University psychologist Yoel Inbar and his colleagues reported in a recent study in the journal Emotion.

In one experiment, the researchers randomly assigned 44 undergraduate students from the University of California, Irvine, to one of two different conditions. Half of the participants were asked to read a brief story about the director of a risqué music video which turned out to have the side-effect of encouraging gay men to French–kiss in public. (Think Katy Perry’s homoerotic “I Kissed a Girl” but, for this study, a male-on-male “I Kissed a Boy” equivalent.) The remaining participants read the same story, yet in this other version the video was said to have caused straight couples to French–kiss in public rather than gay men. It was stressed to participants in both conditions that the director knew the video was likely to induce public French–kissing but this was not his primary goal in making the video.

The participants were then asked the following questions: (1) Did the director intentionally encourage homosexual men [or straight couples] to French–kiss in public? (2) Is there anything wrong with homosexual men [or straight couples] French–kissing in public? (3) Was it wrong of the director to make a video that he knew would encourage homosexual men [or straight couples] to French–kiss in public? ... And as predicted, these mostly college-aged participants agreed that there’s nothing wrong with either straight or gay couples displaying this type of affection in public, nor, for that matter, was it wrong for the director to encourage such behavior in either case. Intriguingly, however, in response to the first question, participants viewed the director’s actions as being more intentional when he encouraged gays to kiss in public than straights.

American Idol 101

I'm pretty hopeless when it comes to popular culture.  In recent quick scans of lgbt blog headlines, for example, I frankly couldn't tell whether Adam Lambert was a TV heart throb or a game show contestant.  It turns out he was both. Who knew.

Then along comes someone really smart - in this case, JoAnn Wypijewski in a post at The Nation blog - who can translate between music and ideas in a way that I never could:

You always remember your first. Concert, that is. Mine was Elvis, early '70s, the spangled jumpsuit period. I must have been about 14. I had already spent childhood years grooving to Motown, play-strutting to the Rolling Stones, falling in love with Janis Joplin, bad skin and all. Janis was dead now; so was Jimi Hendrix. I had been enthralled by a clip of Hendrix playing at Woodstock and had thought to myself, innocent of the mad specialness of the moment, "I'll be there next time..."

Elvis sure wasn't Woodstock. ... My brother took my sister and me to the concert. I remember it opening with bombastic fanfare, extreme lighting, a silhouette in a cape. From out of the haze, Elvis emerged like a visitor from another planet. Powder-blue jumpsuit, thick bejeweled belt, a flowing scarf that he would later swipe across his glistening chest and hand to a besotted fan. All the normal rules seemed suspended. I thought he was fabulous.

The word fit. It would fit even better to describe David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, Mick Jagger in full glam-rock mode, Freddie Mercury and Queen, Michael Jackson, Sylvester and disco, Bathhouse Bette Midler: a whole musical accompaniment to something new bubbling up in the culture. Not sexual freedom, exactly--that's a bumpy road, with plenty of blind curves along the way--but sexual conscience and the chance for self-definition. What the Stonewall rebellion did for sexual politics, the fabulous in pop culture did for sexual being. Whether as question mark or exclamation, it made us feel that we all might be free one day; in the meantime, we could feel awfully good trying.

The phenomenon of Adam Lambert makes sense on the shoulders of that history. He transformed the fairly banal "singing competition" of American Idol into a performance of self-possession and an occasion for all kinds of living-room or Internet chatter about what's masculine, what's "theatrical" (the show's code for too Broadway, too queer) and why artifice is sometimes the surest route to authenticity. It's been a long time coming, but "fabulous" has supercharged its way back into the language of pop culture. And another generation of kids, some of them anyway, are eyes wide in wonder. "...

For those who somehow missed it, for sixteen weeks in a row Lambert played with pop music's trinity of artistry, star power and erotic projection, and then came up short in audience votes on May 20 against a church worship leader from Arkansas called Kris Allen. American Idol's host, Ryan Seacrest, had called the final showdown "the guy next door versus the guyliner." Kris, a small, sensitive, sandy-haired 23-year-old who evokes the coffeehouse school of music, had ditched references to his wife early in the competition, recognizing the value of teenage girl fantasies to his fortunes. Adam, a tall, sweet-faced 27-year-old with bad skin, blue-black hair, earrings and a liking for black nail polish, had once described himself as "your boy next door who decided that he wanted to be a rebel one day, so--I'm a nice rebel." Despite, or maybe because of, photos of him passionately kissing a boyfriend or semi-clad as some woodland nymph at Burning Man, Lambert had his own constituency of teenage girls ...

It's easy to make fun of the teenagers, or to read Kris Allen's coronation as the triumph of red state Christian "values," as easy as writing off popular culture as the degraded effluent of capitalism, and as pinched. Kris may have represented the conventional boy next door to most of the teens and grannies in the audience, but he also represented the iconic boy next door of gay porn fantasies, the clean-cut guy who meets another clean-cut guy and--Action! Adam may have quickened the pulse of girls desperate to figure out how to negotiate sex roles and somehow transcend them, but he also disgusted some gay men as "screechy," flamboyant. Gay web discussions oozed with self-hate in the form of put-downs: "I don't want this queen representing us." The gay vote, a major constituency of American Idol, was split.

In the end the voting was pretty silly, or sad. But the desires and fears, longings and confusions, even injuries, behind it--the human conditions that popular culture has always provided a platform for exploring--were given expression every time Adam took the stage. From his audition performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody," his haunting versions of "Tracks of My Tears" and "Mad World" to his anthem call in "Born to Be Wild" to "take the world in a love embrace" and his near-orgasmic interpretation of "Ring of Fire," he was both Everyman and Everygayman: not any one sex so much as every sex, skating the edge of ecstasy and terror, practiced in all the feints and masquerades demanded by ordinary life but unsettled by them, urgent, wanting, driven to kick the table of hardened assumptions, still in 2009, and rearrange the pieces in the hope of feeling real, "Feeling Good."

... That Adam Lambert projected himself as a natural sexual being at ease in the skin of difference at the same time that those convention-centric issues were all on the political front burner, though, was a clarifying reminder of gay culture's great underappreciated gift to the world. In this time and place, Adam is something of an outlaw, and an outlaw, even a nice, wildly talented, seemingly well-adjusted one, will never win a majority vote.

"Ambivalent men" and fluid categories in non-western cultures

By Diamond Walid for The Guardian:

... Western visitors to southern or Middle-Eastern countries are often perplexed, not only by open homosocial affection but also by the presence of a thriving homosexual "underworld". For if two men holding hands in public does not necessarily mean that they are romantically tied, it certainly opens the doors of possibility. In Pakistan, a popular drag queen hosts a TV show tackling serious current issues. Asked by a stunned French reporter whether she was advocating LGBTQ rights, she replied: "Darling, these categories do not apply in my culture." As much as it is hard to imagine a cross-dresser hosting a political show in France, it is easy to notice that for the reporter, visibility equals political statement. Categories are indeed different.

Since times immemorial, when assinnus served in temples of Ishtar, "ambivalent" men have been an integral part of social, religious and economic life in the Middle East. To this day, many of these "third sex" members can be seen in everyday Middle-Eastern life. Beyond "ladyboys", a certain form of bisexuality at large is considered as an essential component of human sexuality in many Middle-Eastern countries. Being exclusively "straight" or "gay" are exceptions. This "bisexuality" follows certain codes: between two men, one partner is necessarily "active" and the other "passive". However, this apparent rigidity, a handy concession to society, often hides an unsuspected flexibility in the private realm. Boundaries between what people in western societies would call "LG", "B" or "T" become quite thin and all labels tend to disappear.

This openness is often mirrored in public places. In the suburbs of Beirut lies a karaoke club connected to a football field which, along with the footballers, attracts many highly flamboyant men. Miming to the latest Arab divas' songs, these modern assinnus are immensely popular among the crowd of both men and women.

Some "analysts" put down this sexual flexibility in the Middle East to a supposed "unavailability" of women. Not only does this stem from prejudice, but it is also easily discarded by all the non-Muslim countries with similar attitudes. The simple fact is that all these cultures have remained true to their innermost inclinations, to principles of their original nature-religions – what some call "paganism" – despite all the efforts of religious institutions to impose their taboos and despite the endeavours of colonialists to "civilise" them by instating anti-homosexuality laws.

The aim here is not to portray a "corrupt" western society versus a "pure" one in the south and east. This "purity" illusion has long ago been shattered by anthropologists. As much as there is no black or white in matters of human sexuality, there is none in gay rights. The aim should be to abandon the west-versus-the-rest monologue where one side dictates to the other and engage instead in a real dialogue which embraces this unfathomable cultural diversity in the face of an ongoing "McDonaldisation" of sexual identities and practices.

In Boston, even Trivia players talk about it

From the (still alive) Boston Globe

At the Savant Project in Mission Hill on a recent Sunday night, Boston seemed far from its Puritan City roots. The restaurant's co-owner Benjamin Kraines sat at one of his dining room tables with a stack of books that included "The Practical Encyclopedia of Sex and Health," "Sex in History," and porn star Ron Jeremy's autobiography. Next to Kraines was Megan Andelloux, a sex educator based in Rhode Island who goes by the name Oh Megan. Next to Andelloux was Maureen Hautaniemi, a Savant Project manager who helps run the bar's special events - including the popular Sex and Drugs Trivia night.

As the threesome made plans for Sex and Drugs-related activities, a Jamaica Plain couple waited to be asked questions about their private parts. "It will either be embarrassing or humiliating or both," said 32-year-old Matt Liebhold, who brought his girlfriend, Cathy Wirth, to play the game.

Kraines admits that when he started this sex-and-drugs-themed Sunday activity, he knew it was a risk. Boston is known for being prudish, and he runs a restaurant that aims to draw a clientele that can afford gourmet polenta and seared tuna. But as it turns out, people in Boston - even some of the highbrow foodies - like to talk about taboo topics in public. They want to learn about their bodies. They want to hear about various methods of birth control and STDs. Even when they're squeamish, they're riveted.

That's why Kraines started this Sunday-night game. There are plenty of trivia nights around Boston. There are wine dinners and tastings. But what about a safe space to giggle and talk about sex and drugs? Kraines liked the idea of smart, subversive nightlifers conversing about what goes on behind closed doors, free of judgments. Those easily offended should leave by 8 p.m.

Last summer, Mission Hill locals and friends of the staff were the only real Sex and Drugs takers. But soon enough, word spread, and now the regulars have to call ahead for tables. This past Sunday - Mother's Day - patrons began arriving for the trivia close to an hour ahead of the 8 p.m. start time. "We have to make a reservation," said Jack Romano, who's been coming to Sex and Drugs Trivia since day one.

Sex trivia works a lot like Stump Trivia! (the game run in most bars around town). Teams come up with creative names (most of which aren't fit to be printed in the Globe). There are some drug-related questions, but the hits are the sex stumpers. When Andelloux is present, which is the first Sunday of every month, the night is a learning experience. Oh Megan does demonstrations and gets deep into the uncomfortable topics. "It just kind of makes people wish they had another beer," explained regular Kate Ziegler, 23.

Andelloux doesn't preach, but on occasion she does force folks to consider the way they treat their partners and their own sexual health. She remembers asking customers at one trivia night to list nonverbal cues their female partners might use to indicate they were not enjoying themselves during a sexual activity. I asked her what she got for answers. "Not the right ones," she joked.

Kraines, Andelloux, and Hautaniemi will soon unveil plans for their summer Sex and Drugs birthday celebration. There will be more embarrassment. More unprintable topics discussed. You might think no one will be interested, but if the regular Sunday crowd is any indication, the line will be out the door.

Staten Island's well of censorship - Part 2

The NY Times today runs an update to the scandal, Staten Island style, over Holly Hughes' 25-year-old play:

[A]t the College of Staten Island, a mildly ribald farce entitled “The Well of Horniness” will be staged this week by a talented senior named Robert Mahoney. Originally, an excerpt of the play was also going to enjoy a place of honor on Thursday at an undergraduate research conference that serves as a showcase of student achievement. Now it has become something else entirely.

Some college officials got the idea that the word “horniness” in the title might offend the sensibilities of Catholics on Staten Island. It is not entirely clear why this would be so, but there is no doubt that Catholics from Staten Island are an important reservoir of potential students for the college. And students from Catholic high schools were invited to the research conference, to get a taste of possibilities at the college.

So over the last few weeks, this production of “The Well of Horniness” has gone through a cyclone of contradictory decisions — or, as the college’s official spokesman puts it, “discussions.”

Initially, the play was banished from the conference, though officials said it still could be performed in the evening, after the conference had ended. And Mr. Mahoney would be allowed to display a poster about his project, as other students at the conference would do — but while a biology student might be able to mention the mating practices of fruit flies, Mr. Mahoney would not be allowed to include the title of the play.

Mr. Mahoney learned about this last week from Francisco Soto, the dean of humanities and social sciences. “Francisco said we could not do the extract from the play as part of the undergraduate research conference,” said Maurya Wickstrom, an associate professor who serves as a mentor to Mr. Mahoney. “As he expressed it, this is an extremely conservative community. The sexuality might be offensive to nuns, counselors from Catholic high schools, the high school students.”

Bob Huber, a spokesman for the school, said the main concerns were the possible presence of people as young as 14 at the conference. Ms. Wickstrom said that was not what she was told. “That was not part of the meeting that I was in,” she said. “I don’t remember age being mentioned. The issue revolved around the fact that College of Staten Island has a big Catholic constituency.”

That was also what George Sanchez, the chairman of the performing and creative arts department, heard. An associate provost, Susan Holak, told him that “she wasn’t sure how well this would go over with the Catholic schools,” Mr. Sanchez said. “The concern was the title, ‘The Well of Horniness.’ The conference got conflated with an outreach and recruiting event. She mentioned there was a nun who was very conservative.” The school spokesman, Mr. Huber, said: “I have no knowledge of that. The concern was regarding minors attending the conference.”

The associate provost, Ms. Holak, would not speak about the decision except to say on Monday that it would be shown on campus. Holly Hughes, the author of the play, said: “It’s not censorship, other than the fact that no one can see it. Yes, it’s being shown. It’s not being advertised. It won’t be presented during the conference.” Ms. Hughes notes that the play is 25 years old, and that around 1984, The Village Voice — of all publications — would not accept an ad because of the title.

“This is a terrible message to the student,” Ms. Hughes said. By late Tuesday, the school apparently had come to the same conclusion. Mr. Huber said the authorities were now willing to let it be presented during the conference. On Tuesday, Mr. Mahoney said he was scrambling “in chaos” to round up his actors and crew of 15 in time.

And it’s not yet known whether the Catholics of Staten Island would be more offended by the play itself, or the notion that they could not tolerate mention of the word “horniness” and the condition it describes.

New York college censors production of Holly Hughes play

A senior at the College of Staten Island, who was recognized as an outstanding undergraduate director with an invitation to produce a play of his choice at a college festival, was stopped by the administration from producing a play by Holly Hughes, The Well of Horniness. Although the college has now backed down, the timing of their latest position will effectively prevent the play from being part of the festival.  Has freedom of expression not made it to Staten Island?

The following is from Holly:

A senior student at the College of Staten Island, Robert Mahoney, was
invited by the Associate Provost Susan Holak to direct a play as part
of his senior project for The Undergraduate Conference on Research,
Scholarship and Performance - and it was set to be performed on April
30 from 1:30-4 pm event.  Last year, Mahoney directed a Caryl Churchill
play.  Inclusion in the conference is a huge honor for undergraduates.

conference website
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/UGConference/moreinfo.php

Last week, the Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities Francisco
Soto called a special meeting to discuss the presentation of The Well
of Horniness. Dean Soto told the student and a couple of faculty
members that since Conference was to be used for recruiting, the play
could not be presented because because it might offend Catholics.
(Ironically, Soto's own work is on the censorship of gay writer Reinaldo
Arenas.)

Gay icons pick icons for exhibit of "gay icons"

The National Portrait Gallery in London asked a panel of 10 prominent gay people, including Elton John, Ian McKellen, Sarah Waters and Billie Jean King, to name their icons (gay or straight) for an exhibit on "Gay Icons." The result, opening in July, will include Princess Diana, Nelson Mandela, Virginia Woolf, Maya Angelou, Harvey Milk, mathematician Alan Turing, sculptor Rosa Bonheur, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, tennis star Althea Gibson and more (the full list has not been released yet).

The Guardian's Barbara Ellen calls the list "a gently lapping sea of academia-pleasing, well-behaved, hushed library tone, don't scare the horses gay goodliness. There's a cursory sprinkling of Joe Ortons and Quentin Crisps to keep the people in the cheap seats happy, presumably so that the thicker, less moneyed/metropolitan homosexual can cry: 'Phew, I've heard of that one.'" But, she notes, no screamers.

I concur; this list has a low glam count.

Check out this interview with the deputy director of the Portrait Gallery who provides a very British explanation.  I wonder if she checked Wikipedia, which actually has a "gay icons" entry replete with names. Imelda Marcos, anyone?

"Heckuva Job" award goes to ...

The morality police have come up with another really smashing idea: prosecute teenagers who send sexually suggestive photos of themselves to friends.  (When done by cellphone, this is "sexting.") The Wall Street Journal reports that district attorneys in Ohio, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and  Wisconsin have tried to stop this practice by filing charges against teens who send and receive the  pictures.

Hunter's Heckuva Job Award, though, goes to ... Wyoming, County, PA prosecutor George Skumanik, who opined that teens who sext are accomplices to the charge of producing child pornography. Mr. Skumanik now has to defend the lawsuit that he so richly deserves.  According to the ACLU, which represents three of the teens and their parents:

In February 2009, Skumanick sent a letter to the parents of approximately twenty Tunkhannock students, including the ACLU's clients, threatening the students with criminal felony charges if they did not agree to be placed on probation and participate in a counseling program he devised. A course outline indicates that the program will help the girls "[g]ain an understanding of how [their] actions were wrong," "gain an understanding of what it means to be a girl in today's society," and "[i]dentify non-traditional societal and job roles."

The district attorney told a group of parents and students in February that he has the authority to prosecute girls photographed in underwear, like the ACLU's clients, or even in a bikini on the beach, because the photos are "provocative."

There are so many things to love about this strategy. First, it's obvious from the description of these re-education camps that they aren't planning to do any for boys. What a surprise.

Second, the primary targets - sexually precocious teenage girls - are a group who society just loves to punish in order to protect. Think of the many wonderful disciplinary strategies developed in their name over history. Parental consent laws! Curfews! Long ugly skirts!

My favorite aspect of the anti-sexting campaign, though, is its wonderful counseling program, the one being set up so that these wayward types can "gain an understanding of what it means to be a girl." Including free lessons in "non-traditional societal roles." And people wonder why feminist has become a dirty word. This sounds like cultural revolution as devised by a team made up of Phyllis Schlafley and Catharine MacKinnon.

You're doing a heckuva job, George.

UPDATE: The federal court issued an injunction against George's plan.

The most amazing TV ad you've seen in a long time

The following ad from Argentina speaks even more volumes about the extraordinary cultural changes afoot in Latin America. (HT Karla Dobinski) The translation is below.

"Hello, Mr. Louis."
"Hi...I have a question. When you applied to get the loan to open this beauty salon, did you have to show an ID?"
"...yeah.... "
"and on your ID, it says that you're really a male, doesn't it?"
"..yes."
"and they still gave you the loan?"
"yes."
"well...they are the same bank that just gave me a loan to buy my new car. and...it just made me think, you know? and i came here...to apologize for treating you poorly all these years. for not knowing how to treat you. I want you to have this."