A Flaming New Anthology

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Emerson Whitney

A bathroom view of two side-by-side urinals is the book jacket graphic for Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's new anthology, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?

In a femme and fearless metaphor, one of the urinals is stuffed full of jewelry, flowers, and other colorful, queer-looking flotsam -- a nod to the book's anthological content, featuring "flaming challenges to masculinity, objectification, and the desire to conform," as the subtitle reads.

In anticipation of the book's official launch -- slated to take place, appropriately, on Valentine's Day -- Ms. Sycamore spoke with me while on her West Coast book tour.

"The book is dedicated to exposing hierarchies wherever they exist," said Ms. Sycamore of Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?

The book was born, she said, out of frustrations with the "gay male" sex scene that she inhabits, and the hierarchies within it: internet cruising, sexual commoditization, and assimilationist culture.

"It's about flaming challenges to all of that," she said. "Flaming as in flamboyant and queenie and outside the conventional binary, but also in the sense of lighting things on fire."

She paused. We laughed.

Since her first book, Tricks and Treats: Sex Workers Write About Their Clients, published in 2000, Ms. Sycamore's work has lit lots of us on fire.

Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? is her fifth anthology in a string of wildly popular works -- at least, in the queer scene -- including her much-acclaimed Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (2007) and That's Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (2008).

"Like always with my anthologies, the idea for this one stemmed from a question that's coming from my own life experience and the cultures I'm involved in," she said.

"In my life, I feel really inspired by trans/genderqueer and gender-nonconforming communities that I inhabit. But in a very personal way, I feel less and less hopeful in the sexual spaces I find myself. Gay male space often mimics the grossest norms of everything I hate."

Ms. Sycamore and I discussed cyber cruising scenarios, including the use of Grindr, a gay cruising app for the iPhone. (For further reading, visit a new website called "Douchebags of Grinder," aimed at exposing extreme examples of racist, ableist, classist, and other stereotypical gay male sexual exclusivity, as illustrated by profiles on Grinder.)

"'No femmes or fatties' is practically the mantra of gay cruising culture on the Web," she said. "This gross kind of hierarchical regimentation has become so normalized, to such an extent that most gays don't take the time to say, 'Oh, that's fucked up.'"

Ms. Sycamore described an experience she had attempting to say "that's fucked up" to a random cruiser.
"Someone had one of those standard posts with all the 'don'ts,' and this one was 'no Asians,'" she said.

"I wrote, 'I'd prefer no racists,' and the person responded by saying, 'Don't be sore just because you're Asian.'"

Ms. Sycamore is not Asian, and she was appalled at the expectation she shouldn't be offended by a racist comment if she is not member of the race the comment is perpetrated against.

"I wonder whatever happened to our dream of a world of sexual splendor?" she said. "The dream of a sexually inclusive utopia.

Today, instead of imagination, we just have regimentation. The gay culture started out so we'd have a place to express ourselves sexually. Where's all the glamor and joy and sustainability now?"

The stories of 31 different authors were compiled in Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? in an attempt to answer this question.

And according to Ms. Sycamore, the authors and their subjects are as varied as the alternatives to sexual assimilation.

"For example, there's a piece by a straight, female prison guard about the interaction between homophobia and male-on-male desire in prison," she said.

"And there's another story about how drag king culture sometimes takes on the same kinds of prioritization of masculinity as in the gay male and heteronormative communities.

Even in a performance that is based on gender fluidity, still there's a hierarchy. It's amazing!"


Read the rest

Homosexuality: Editing the APA Manual, the Bible and the Book of Life

via examiner, By Kevin Probst

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) declared that homosexuality was not a disease simply by altering its own 81-word definition of sexual deviance.  Presto, just like that, a new declaration made in a moment of time redefined sexual behavior.  The APA still considers Gender Identity Disorder and Transvestic Fetishism to be mental disorders.  If this seems inconsistent it shouldn’t be a problem for the APA to pick up the black marker and strike a couple more disorders from its manual.

 I’m not a Psychiatrist and I confess that I have very little interest in the field.  I wouldn’t know a mental disorder if it were staring me in the face which is probably evidence that I have a few.  But, I’m taken back by what seemed to be a lack of debate on the issue.  If this was a mental disorder on Monday how could it have simply ceased being a disorder on Tuesday because it was blotted from the book?  If a group of oncologists gather and declare cancer to no longer be a disease does it make it so?

 I’m not in total disagreement with the APA regarding their assessment.  I don’t think homosexuality is a disease.  I think it is but one sinful behavior in a long list of sexual sins condemned by the Word of God.  Also on that list is adultery, fornication, pre-marital sex, etc.  Sexual sin is a sub-category of a larger list of sinful behaviors including theft, lying, idolatry, e.g. the Ten Commandments.  It is true that one of these sins is no more or less offensive to God than another.  Sin is basically choosing to have it our own way rather than submit to the authority of God.  It boils down to pride, or as Old Blue Eyes used to sing, “I did it my way.”

So, why address the sin of homosexuality?  Why not address adultery, or theft or deception?  Christians often feel the need to isolate homosexuality because it is being redefined by the culture.  The success of having homosexuality stricken from the APA’s list of mental diseases was intoxicating to homosexual activists.  Naturally, the next step would be to erase homosexuality from the Bible.  It’s referral to homosexuality as a deviant, sinful behavior is very detrimental to the goal of societal acceptance.  It should be easy, just declare it to no longer be a sin and presto, it shall be so.

Read more.

Who's that Queer?

Brought to you by Pistol Pete

With ironic wit and spot-on social commentary, David Sedaris has quickly become one of America’s most widely-acclaimed humor writers. As of 2008, his books have collectively sold seven million copies. Much of Sedaris humor is autobiographical and self-deprecating, and often concerns his family life, his middle class upbringing in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina, Greek heritage, various jobs, education, drug use, homosexuality, and his life in France with his boyfriend, Hugh Hamrick.


Sedaris was born in Binghampton, New York, and raised in a suburban section of Raleigh, North Carolina. In his teens and twenties, he dabbled in visual and performance art., but was unsuccessful. Sedaris briefly attended Western Carolina University before transferring and dropping out of Kent State University in 1977. He then he moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1983, graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1987.

While working a string of odd jobs across Raleigh, Chicago, and New York City, Sedaris was discovered reading his diary (which he has kept since 1977) in a Chicago club by radio host Ira Glass, who asked Sedaris to appear on his weekly local program The Wild Room. Sedaris later said, "I owe everything to Ira....My life just changed completely, like someone waved a magic wand”. Sedaris' success on The Wild Room led to his National Public Radio debut on December 23, 1992, when he read a radio essay on Morning Edition titled "SantaLand Diaries", which described his experiences working as an elf at Macy's department store during Christmas time in New York.


In 1994, Sedaris released his book of stories and essays titled Barrel Fever. Shortly after, in 1995, Ira Glass began hosting the weekly hour-long PRI/Chicago Public Radio show This American Life, and Sedaris became a frequent contributor. He also began publishing essays in Esquire and The New Yorker, and in 1997, he published another collection of essays, Naked. His next book, Me Talk Pretty One Day, for which Sedaris won the Thurber Prize for American Humor and was named "Humorist of the Year" by Time magazine, was written mostly in France over a period of seven months, and was published in 2000 to “practically unanimous rave reviews”.

In September 2007, a new Sedaris collection, When You Are Engulfed in Flames was announced for publication on June 3, 2008. Although at least one news source assumed that the book would consist entirely of fables, Sedaris said in an October 2007 interview that the collection might include a "surprisingly brief story about [his] decision to quit smoking....along with stories about a Polish crybaby, throwing shit in a paraplegic's yard, chimpanzees at a typing school, and people visiting [him] in France”.


In addition to his career as an author, David Sedaris and his sister, Amy Sedaris, have collaborated under the name “The Talent Family” and have written half-a-dozen plays which have been produced at La Mama, Lincoln Center, and The Drama Department in New York City. These plays include Stump the Host, Stitches, One Woman Shoe, which received an Obie Award, Incident at Cobbler’s Knob, and The Book of Liz, which was published in book form by Dramatists Play Service.

Source: Wikipedia.org

Beyond Marriage: An Interview with Nancy Polikoff via Bookslut

Marriage shouldn’t be the dividing line between relationships that have legal consequences attached to them and those that don’t.

As the debate over who should be allowed to marry unfolds across the nation, law professor and author Nancy Polikoff is asking straights and gays alike to consider a broader approach to thinking about what constitutes familial commitment and how it should be legally protected. In her book Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage, Polikoff calls for a revamping of regulations related to family law, including death benefits, medical leave and divorce -- all with the end goal of reducing marriage’s privileged status in deciding these matters. To make her case, Polikoff cites numerous examples of legal benefits automatically accorded to marriage that frequently end up hurting children and, for that matter, anyone in nontraditional families, including unmarried couples both gay and straight. As Polikoff puts it bluntly: “People who marry 10 days after they meet get legal consequences, and ones who live together for 20 years don’t.” If Polikoff had her way, she explains in the interview that follows, marriage would no longer be “the dividing line between who’s in and who’s out.” Instead, the law should value all families, according to Polikoff – an increasingly compelling proposition at a time when more than half of U.S. households are headed by unmarried people and one third of children are raised in homes by unmarried people.

Read the interview on Bookslut.

BULLETPROOF FAITH: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians

A refrain heard relentlessly by gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people of faith is: “God hates fags!” Whether it’s hurled as a direct insult or stated more subtly in a “Love the sinner, hate the sin” theology, the message to GLBT ears is the same: “God hates you and so do we!” From this kind of blatant attack, to “ex-gay” ministries, to faith-based arguments for a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution against “gay marriage,” to the divide in churches like the Episcopal Church over a gay bishop, the faith of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people of faith is constantly under assault. In such a toxic religious environment, many GLBT people abandon their faith, believing that God hates them or at the very least will not love them unless they give up or deny their sexual orientation.

Read more.

Signings Set for Out and Proud in Chicago

Prominent Historians Jonathan Ned Katz and John D'Emilio
to Make Rare Chicago Joint Appearance

CHICAGO -- Lavishly illustrated with almost 400 historical color and black-and-white photographs, and drawing on the scholarly, historical, and journalistic contributions of a breadth of authorities on Chicago's LGBT culture and scene, Out and Proud in Chicago: An Overview of the City's Gay Community (Surrey Books, 224 pages) is the first overview of Chicago’s LGBT community and its history. Published as a companion to the WTTW public television documentary of the same name, and to the web site, the book is organized into a few main chronological sections, from Prairie Settlement to the 2000s. Windy City Times Publisher Tracy Baim edited and co-wrote the book, and was joined by more than two dozen other writers.

Several booksignings have been scheduled for the Chicago area in September and October, to promote both the book and the launch of the Chicago Gay History Project (web site).

There will be co-authors at each of these events, depending on their schedules. All events are free except for the Sept. 26 fundraiser.

-- Sept. 18, 2008: Book launch: Thursday, Sept. 18, 7 p.m. at Women & Children First Books, 5233 N. Clark Street, Chicago, 773-769-6729. Come meet many of the writers and photographers featured in this new book.

-- Sept. 26, 2008: History Project fundraiser featuring a rare Chicago appearance by national gay historian Jonathan Ned Katz and Chicago-based historian John D'Emilio (left). Hosted by Michael Leppen at the Sears Tower Metropolitan Club, 5:30-7:30 p.m., $500 donation. Call 773-387-2394 for details tickets. Sign language interpreter.

-- Sept. 27, 2008: History Project and Community Book Launch, featuring more than a dozen of the writers from Out and Proud, plus Jonathan Ned Katz and John D'Emilio. Hear about the Web site's future and get copies of your book signed. Saturday, Sept. 27, noon-2 p.m., Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted. Sign language interpreter.

-- Oct. 1, 2008: The Chicago Public Library, Harold Washington Branch downtown, is hosting a panel discussion of the Web site and book, 6 p.m., Wed., Oct. 1, 6 p.m., 400 S. State Street, Chicago. This free event features panelists Tracy Baim, Marie J. Kuda, Jorjet Harper, William B. Kelley, Pat McCombs and Chuck Renslow, followed by Q&A and booksigning.

-- Oct. 5, 2008: Centuries and Sleuths Bookstore hosts our first suburban Out and Proud booksigning, featuring writer Marie J. Kuda and Tracy Baim, Sunday, Oct. 5, 2-4 p.m., 7419 W. Madison Street, Forest Park, Ill., 708-771-7243.

-- Oct. 11, 2008: National Coming Out Day is the occasion for this signing in Oak Park 2-4 p.m. at Borders, 1144 Lake Street, 708-386-6927. Hear from Oak Parker Marie J. Kuda, Tracy Baim and other writers about Coming Out Day, the 10th anniversary of the Matthew Shepard murder, and its impact on Chicago.

-- Oct. 12, 2008: A special far west suburban booksigning in St. Charles 2-4 p.m., at the TownHouse Books & Cafe, 105 North 2nd Avenue, St. Charles, Ill., 630-584-8600.

Out & Proud in Chicago begins the work of capturing a history that often has been hidden, or at least elusive. As editor Tracy Baim writes in her introduction, “A few brave people did try to document our community, either as major events were happening or through groundbreaking historical research. These writers, journalists, photographers, filmmakers, academics and historians have tried to find many needles in the haystack, through interviews with pioneers, digging into old university and museum archives, and reading the often-biased coverage of the mainstream media. In some cases, finding out if there was a ‘there’ there meant reading between the lines and piecing together what it was to be ‘gay’ 100 years ago.”

More info?
Click here or e-mail editor@windycitymediagroup.com.

On LifeLube's nightstand...

Most public health students, academicians, and practitioners recognize the association between racial/ethnic minority status and the disproportionate burden of preventable disease in the United States.

Much less attention has been directed, however, toward health disparities that affect gay and bisexual men. These disparities affect the lives of an estimated 5.3-7.4 million American men, and are an important concern for public health.

Until very recently, the relative invisibility of this group and a paucity of empirical data have hampered attempts to identify health disparities experienced by gay and bisexual men. This book reviews and synthesize evidence of health disparities among gay and bisexual men, identifies individual and community factors that contribute to these disparities, and articulates strategies for public health efforts to eliminate disparities.

To date, these disparities have been largely discussed in isolation in the research literature in a manner that does not permit a comprehensive examination of these problems, their underlying causes, and potential solutions. A primary emphasis of the book documents health disparities among gay and bisexual men while also describing public health solutions to these challenges.

Oxford University Press.

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