Category Archives: GayGayGay

December 19, 2010, 3:22 pm

Why Ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Is Important, And What Remains To Be Done

Make love, not war? Photo credit.

I am one of those lefty queers who is both anti-war and desired the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Noxious as war is, it is also my view that allowing forms of discrimination to be written into the law is neither a gift (“Yay, I am radically free from compulsory marriage!”) or a way to distance from the American war machine (“Yay! I’m not implicated in the American war machine, even though my consumer habits, my pension and the university that employs me depends on it!”)

In regard to this latter point: think Bayard Rustin. True, Bayard was not out as a gay man until very late in life, but he was very black, and he went to jail during World War II as a conscientious objector as a member of both the civil rights and anti-war movements. I mention this both because he might have evaded service by announcing his homosexuality (although this would have…

November 29, 2010, 7:48 pm

Department of Archives: GLAD Papers Go To Yale, Mitch McConnell Comes Out

By Claire Potter

Ssssh! Don’t let John Boehner know!

That’s Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, queer history fans. And Mitch McConnell didn’t really come out, but doesn’t the action figure at right look a lot like Mitch McConnell in a dress? And wouldn’t it be cool if he did come out, and then helped to get rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?

OK, dream on. And when I dream, I dream of archives. In case you don’t know why the GLAD archive is important, read on from this press release received on the Radical desk top today:

GLAD is the New England litigation organization whose precedent-setting legal victories include bringing marriage equality to Massachusetts in 2004 and Connecticut in 2008.

Covering all the major social changes and legal developments in contemporary LGBT history – from the HIV epidemic to marriage equality, from transgender rights to the “gayby boom,” GLAD’s records include…

November 24, 2010, 12:27 am

Keep Your Hands Off My Junk! And Other Happy Thanksgiving Travel Wishes

By Claire Potter

Lesbo TSA fantasy time. Reuters photo.

It appears that our new national crisis is the danger of being irradiated, or the indignity of being aggressively patted down, at the airport. In response to one outraged male victim spontaneously telling a Transportation Safety Authority employee to “Keep your hands off my junk!” people on the right and the left seem to have united in the belief that the government is going too far by making sure that airline passengers are not rigged as boobs — er, I mean, bombs.

You can even buy a tee shirt to let the TSA know how you feel about it.

Now, I don’t mean to be unfeeling. I heard the interview with the man who was publicly drenched in his own urine during a clumsy search. I have read about the flight attendant whose prosthetic breast was examined to see if it contained plastic explosives. I saw the shivering child, whose shirt was removed by his…

November 9, 2010, 12:31 pm

Planet University: Episode 2, “Last Month In Office Hours”

By Claire Potter

For the pilot episode of “Planet University” go to our sister website at Xtranormal.com. Afternoon update: a big welcome to readers of the National Review Online: it’s been awhile, but I’m glad to see you back again.

Disclaimer: this cartoon and its characters are fictional. “Planet University” does not depict actual events, people or conversations.

October 15, 2010, 3:28 pm

Bro’s Before Ho’s and Fraternity Hazing Lows

By Claire Potter

“Spank him hard, but after each spanking make
sure to caress his tender cheeks.” Photo Credit.

By doing things like forcing your pledges/rooks to eat human shit or do an elephant walk you are basically saying, “Hey, by learning what your fellow bros’ shit tastes like you will be better bros,” and I have to say – I really respect that….Everytime I say, “I’m going to make your fucking life a living hell,” I still get a half-chub. Bros fucking love power. You know who else loves power? Slam pieces. By hazing the shit out of pledges/rooks in front of slam pieces, 9 times out of 10 they will go down on you immediately. The other time they will give it up doggy. Bros Like This Site, July 23 2009.

Two days ago, residents of Oligarch University’s historic quad, where all first year students are housed, were interrupted in their evening activities by a line of young men chanting. As…

October 14, 2010, 8:09 pm

Straight People, Listen! Part II: The Homophobia News Of The Week In Review

By Claire Potter

Carl Paladino campaigning in New Paltz, NY after
his ill-chosen homophobic words. Photo credit.

There is a lot going on in the gay world nowadays.

Following the suicide of Tyler Clementi at Rutgers, the straight world has discovered institutionalized homophobia and is “shocked, shocked!” that gay youth are not only routinely bullied in school, but that teachers, principles and coaches stand around and watch while it happens. They are even more shocked that to be the recipient of repeated homophobic bullying is so isolating and devastating to a young person’s self esteem that death seems like a good option.

Before you decide to hang from the highest tree those Rutgers students who posted to the Internet a video of Clementi kissing a boy (the event that precipitated his suicide leap from the George Washington Bridge) or make your own “It Gets Better” video, consider this. What if Clementi …

October 5, 2010, 11:47 am

Straight People, Listen! The Pervasiveness of Cruelty In Mass Culture

By Claire Potter

Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. “It isn’t fair,” she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head. Old Man Warner was saying, “Come on, come on, everyone.” Steve Adams was in the front of the crowd of villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him.

“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.

Shirley Jackson, The Lottery (1948)

Last weekend the Radical household went to see The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010), otherwise known as “The Facebook movie.” Starring the eerily enigmatic Jessie Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, it is a must-see, a fast-paced drama about the birth of the social networking site that any fool can use, and any fool does. I left the theater feeling slightly soiled, in part because…

July 21, 2010, 4:45 pm

“Not All Girls Are Raving Bloody Lesbians, You Know:” Getting You In The Mood For Part II Of The Terry Castle Conversation, Now Up at Historiann

By Claire Potter

Susannah York, who plays the up and coming actress and lover to the older, fading telly star Beryl Reid in Robert Aldrich’s classic The Killing of Sister George (1969), delivers this fabulous set-up line as she tries to deflect her lover’s (accurate) suspicion she is having an affair.

“That is a misfortune that I am perfectly well aware of,” Beryl Reid replies tartly. For your viewing pleasure, I provide the whole clip from this classic lesbian psychodrama below:

You can actually get the whole film at YouTube, if you are patient enough to find all the pieces. I now command you to go to Part II of the Terry Castle discussion, “Humiliation and Longing,” and if you haven’t been there yet, to our partner in crime Comrade Physioprof, who delivers a review of the book that is focused on the humor of “The Professor and Other Writings.”

Several weeks ago we at Tenured Radical received an email from Historiann, who was reading Terry Castle’s The Professor and Other Writings (HarperCollins, 2010.) She notified us that this book — a combination of memoir and cultural criticism — was right up our alley. Several days later, when this slim volume by a Stanford English professor I have long admired had arrived by three-day shipping (and all household activities had been put on hold indefinitely as we went on a binge of reading and downloading Art Pepper albums), Tenured Radical and Historiann agreed that a blog-to-blog conversation was in order.

This is the first of three posts taken from that conversation, which was conducted over email and then edited down. Day 2 will appear tomorrow at Historiann, and then you will want to return to here for the final post on Day 3 (Thursday, July 22). Stay tuned to Comrade

Chauncey DeVega, over at We Are Respectable Negroes, has a few comments on the report issued by the City of Cambridge about the July 16 2009 arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Give it a look and think about what it must be like to be Skip Gates and suck this one up. Or, hypothetically, what it would be like to be you and suck this one up.

Gates, as you may recall, was arrested in his own house after having presented his Harvard identification and, subsequently, losing his temper with Sergeant James Crowley. The conclusion reached by the panel of investigators? Both men were responsible for the incident. They feared each other, the report reasons, and acted accordingly. Gates shouted, Crowley locked him up. Because of their mutual fear, the commissioners reason, the two men shared responsibility for the incident because each might have taken a step back at a crucial moment. (Note to…