BELOW THE BELT

nomorepotlucks: Dump Gay Marriage Now

2009-07-11T14:39:00.003-04:00

Yasmin Nair joins us from nomorepotlucks:

The popular and populist history of gays in the United States goes something like this: In the beginning, gay people were horribly oppressed. Then came change in the 1970s, where gays like the men in the Village People were able to live openly and had a lot of sex. Then, in the 1980s, many gay people died of AIDS, and that taught them that gay sex is bad. The gays that were left began to realise the importance of stable, monogamous relationships and began to agitate for marriage. Soon, in the very near future, with the help of supportive, married straight people—and the help of President Obama—gays will gain marriage rights in all 50 states, and they will then be as good as everyone else.

This is, of course, a reductionist version of gay history, but it’s also the version of gay (not queer) history that plays out in today’s mainstream media representations of the fight for gay marriage, an issue that is now seen as the alpha and the omega of gay rights in the United States. On May 26, 2009, the California Supreme Court ruled that Proposition 8 would stand, thus upholding a ban on gay marriages; it also ruled that the 18,000 or so marriages that had already taken place would not be invalidated. The decision released a wave of anger in the mainstream pro-gay marriage community. A month later, the Obama administration’s response to the Smelt suit seeking to invalidate the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) brought forth yet another set of petulant tirades and much dramatic rhetoric about “betrayal” by Obama.

An outsider might think that both Proposition 8 and the DOMA case are symptomatic of a widespread wave of unrest among gays and lesbians across the land, who will now take to the streets if need be in their relentless quest for gay marriage. The outsider might also think that this is what every queer in the United States wants: the right to marry. But, in fact, both instances have exposed the fact that the fight for marriage is a drain on the political, economic, and emotional resources of a community that never really wanted gay marriage to begin with. Rather than see the Prop 8 and DOMA debacles as symptoms of a renewed need to fight for gay marriage, I suggest that this is the time to dump gay marriage and return to the real issues that concern us, as queers who are faced with the multiple forms and challenges of inequality in a neoliberal world.

Gay marriage, as framed in the United States, is the ultimate neoliberal fantasy, in that it allows for a politics of the personal to masquerade as a necessity for policy change. In the process, it serves to distract us from the very real issues facing millions of U.S. citizens and residents. For instance, a primary argument for gay marriage has been that it would allow gays and lesbians to acquire health care and other benefits via their spouses. But this claim ignores the fact that the United States is the only Western nation that does not provide health care to its citizens, and that approximately 50 million Americans are without health care. The ability to marry would not help the millions of gays and lesbians without health care in the first place.

As law professor Nancy Polikoff points out in her comprehensive book, Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law, the United States is unique in the way that it draws such sharp distinctions between the married and the unmarried. Countries like the Netherlands and Canada do treat gay and straight relationships equally in that they permit marriage, but what’s often ignored by U.S. gay marriage activists is the fact that these countries also treat married and unmarried people in equal ways. In other words, in Canada, you can be unmarried and still have health care and, in various instances, you can name a person who is not your romantic partner as the beneficiary of your estate. In the United States, however, your marital status is, increasingly, what determines your legal status as well as your legitimacy as a subject of the state.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the treatment accorded to single mothers on welfare. Following the egregiously named “Welfare Reform” package of 1996, poor women in particular have been subject to the kind of state intervention in their lives that would be held as unconstitutional if exerted on any other segment of society. With the collusion of the Religious Right, single mothers are required to undergo marriage counselling in an effort to get them to marry the fathers of their children. The stigma against unmarried people swirls around in U.S. culture at large, with an overwhelming array of messages in the media about single people as desperate, lonely souls who need to find their lifemates if they are ever to be considered as human beings. It is no coincidence that such a widespread deligitimisation of single people comes at a time when fewer people in the United States are getting married—currently, less than 50% of U.S. citizens are married. Divorce rates are higher than ever among those who do get married, sparking great anxiety on the part of the Right.

While the gay and lesbian community is widely seen as a liberal/progressive one, its rhetoric around marriage often mirrors the discourse of the Right on the need for marriage as a stabilising force. Gay marriage activists have taken to deploying the strategies of the Right in asserting that marriage is necessary to cure a host of ills, for instance even going so far as to claim that not having marriage increases the social stigma faced by the children of gay couples. But surely we live in an age where the children of unmarried straight people are not considered “bastards,” and are not disallowed from inheriting property or from receiving parental and state support because their parents were not married. In such claims to moral standards, gay marriage advocacy hearkens back to the conservatism of the 1950s and earlier eras. It’s this conservatism that allows for a blinkered distraction from the other, and more pressing, issues that face queers who are not, after all, immune from the ravages of the world. Or, as Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore puts it, “The spectacle around gay marriage draws attention away from critical issues—like ending U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, stopping massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids across the country, and challenging the never-ending assault on anyone living outside of conventional norms.” In this way, gay marriage, in framing, reinforces the kind of social conservatism that’s essential to maintaining the myth of the United States as the ultimate arbiter of the value of the subjects over which it claims to hold dominion: whether they be Iraqis, Afghanis, or those whose sexual lives do not fall into the patterns the “normal,” monogamous, two-parent household.

As a result of its growing conservatism, the gay marriage movement is gaining support from mainstream media and a range of politicians, including prominent Republicans. This is not an indication of the liberalisation of the United States (inasmuch as we can consider liberalism desirable, which it is not), but its increasing conservatism. At the same time, the vast resources invested in gay marriage also mean a depletion of resources that could go to issues that affect queers on other levels of the state’s interaction and imprisonment of their bodies. At a recent queer anarchist conference, I met with activists Liam Michaud-O'Grady and Ashley Fortier, from the Montreal-based Prisoner Correspondence Project. Their group helps to establishing links between queer prisoners and queers on the outside, with a long-term mentality. I also met with Michael Upton, a graduate researcher at the University of Manchester, whose multi-nation work analyzes and critiques the intellectual property rights issues that surround the global AIDS pharmaceutical industry.

Both projects reminded me that queer activism, while still flourishing and sustained, is muted or silenced in the cacophony around gay marriage. Yet, in the 1970s, prisoner solidarity was a key part of the gay movement. In the 1980s, the wholesale critique of BigPharma was integral to the mandate of queer activist groups like ACT UP. A Chicago attorney who specialises in working with gay groups in countries where embattled queers need the support of international activists to resist the harassment they face told me of his conversations with funders who said, bluntly, that they were only interested in funding gay marriage initiatives. In Connecticut, the gay marriage group Love Makes a Family decided to disband when gay marriage became legal in that state. But surely there is more to gay rights than marriage, and surely a group that could, presumably, corral the kind of economic and social capital that LMF had access to could continue to think of directing its energy to the issues of, say, queers in prison. Instead, it chose to disband. As Nancy Polikoff wrote in a Bilerico post: “The folding of this Connecticut group confirms my fears that marriage is the end point for many people and that achieving justice for the same-sex couples who don't marry and for all the gay men and lesbians, and their children, who are not partnered is not on the agenda.”

Contrary to what the gay mainstream and the press have decided, gay marriage is not the movement. Marriage should never have been our goal to begin with, since, at best, the goal of marriage is a symbolic and sentimental one. Over the last number of decades, gays and lesbians have in fact forged interesting and productive social networks outside of marriage. But with the recent publicity, few in the United States now remember when domestic partnerships were actually seen as a sexy, desirable and viable alternative for those who didn't want to marry. In Massachusetts, and now in Connecticut, for example, several employers have begun to disavow domestic partnerships for all with the simple logic that now that everyone can get married, everyone should, if they want health care and other benefits. Such decisions have raised nary a whisper of protest among the gay marriage group. Today, if any major organization is asked: if civil unions or domestic partnerships could be crafted so that they provided exactly the same benefits as marriage, would you accept them? The answer is usually a resounding no. The goal of marriage has become an end unto itself.

The point, to borrow from Polikoff, should be to make marriage less necessary, not to allow it to become an integral part of access to rights as basic as health care and custody of children. The intense personalisation of gay marriage as an emotional cause (i.e. as something that should matter because of the grief it causes your gay neighbour), is just another way to rationalise and increase the relentless privatisation of everyday life, another way to absolve the state of its responsibility to its subjects. Increasingly, I hear from straight friends that they are being compelled to marry because they are afraid that their unemployed/underemployed partners might be left vulnerable without their health care. All of this is depleting energy from the fight for universal health care. The United States is the only Western nation that does not provide health care. That, and not the fact that we don’t have gay marriage, should be something that shames us all.

As we quibble about marriage, it's easy to forget that a rise in poverty and the lack of health care means that large segments of society are already denied their rights to decent education, housing, and a sense of security about their well-being.

As for the argument that some proponents make about marriage being the only way to have your love recognized—really? If your love can't abide not being recognized by the state, perhaps it's time to consider that you might have bigger problems than simply getting a piece of paper to validate your relationship.

As for the famous line about the 1000+ benefits that can only come through marriage—what about those who are excluded from these benefits simply because they're not married? And here's the basic question: why should marriage guarantee any benefits that aren't available to those who don't want to marry? Why build up the power of the state to coerce people into marital relationships that they don't want, just so that they can get the basics like healthcare?

Marriage has, for too long now, been held up as the only solution to a host of problems, including the lack of health care. The fight for gay marriage, in granting that institution so much importance, is slowly eroding the possibility that the rest of the population might get rights and benefits without marrying each other. The fight over gay marriage has emerged as a progressive cause that all progressive straights should join when, in fact, it's a deeply conservative movement that strips our movement of any imagination. Instead of asking for one way to grant rights and benefits, we ought to be advocating for a multiplicity of options.

Let's dump marriage now.

The Virginity Project: Dan

2009-07-06T10:58:00.002-04:00

What started as a brief conversation with someone about ‘Chuluaqui Quodoushka’ – the teachings of a new age religious group called The Deer Tribe Medicine Society - ended up turning into today’s post and I’ll tell you why.

It all began when an acquaintance told me about a course she had taken in the States about the aforementioned Chuluaqui Quodoushka. ‘It was brilliant’, she said, ‘its based on Native American principles about sexuality’. She went on to tell me that Native American Indians apparently ushered young men into adulthood by allowing older female tribes people to teach them how to make love…

This sounded somewhat fanciful to me and upon further investigation, my suspicions were confirmed. Modern day descendents of the Cherokee Nation have done just about everything they can to distance themselves from the ideas expounded by The Deer Tribe Medicine Society and its founder Harley Reagan.

But my interest was piqued. Not by a bunch of new age sexual fetishists but by the idea that people could be taught how to have sex before they are unleashed upon the rest of the world. And this in turn reminded me of a little tale I was told a while back. It went something like this:

‘Dear Kate

I found your blog the other day and I thought you might be interested in my situation. I just turned twenty-nine and somehow, I am still a virgin. I know it means nothing but I can't help feeling embarrassed and ashamed.

I am a decent-enough looking guy; I'm not crazy or weird in a way that makes people run away. I was even pretty popular in school. Anyway, the relevant bit is that as thirty looms large on the horizon and I feel like more of a sexless freak, I have been considering the possibility of paying for sex and getting the first hurdle out of the way. I dunno if I'd have the guts to do it but I just keep thinking about it. I have no illusions that the first time will be great anyway, so why not just get it done in whatever crap way necessary?

Best wishes,
Dan’

Nothing too unusual here. I get emails like this all the time. Granted, they are not often from twenty nine year olds but in general, emails from older virgins are far more frequent than you might think. The point is that being a virgin is difficult in today’s society. Being a twenty nine year old virgin is even harder. What kind of woman is going to expect to sleep with a twenty nine year old man only to discover that he has no experience whatsoever? And what kind of thoughts are going to be going through said man’s head at the prospect of such an occasion? I’ll tell you what thoughts are going through his head. They are here:

‘My name is Dan and a few months ago I wrote you an email about my situation. I want to update this for reasons that will become obvious.
In October, I turned twenty-nine and still a virgin. Many years of drastically falling confidence had taken their toll to the point that I was even considering the possibility of getting my virginity out of the way by paying for sex. Your reply was very sympathetic and warming and I thank you for that!

The reason I am writing, is that after much talk with close friends about letting go of worry and embracing whatever comes in life, I have managed to turn a huge corner. I feel that the conscious effort to change to a more positive outlook on life has led me to this most recent situation...

...A few nights ago at a rock nightclub with friends, a female friend who I had always thought was stunning but out of my league, drunkenly confessed that she really liked me. I was in total, and I mean TOTAL shock. Before I knew it, we were kissing and spent the rest of the night doing the same. She made it clear that she was willing to have sex that night and she came back to my place for coffee but I felt so in shock and wary of her being drunk that we left it at that - with the promise of a date. My confidence from that night was boosted immeasurably, along with my newfound attitude of wanting to embrace the scary changes which can make life wonderful.

We met a few days later and hit it off right where we left off and it was so exciting! We got a little tipsy, and then quite drunk, although I must stress that alcohol only greased the wheels of an already rolling wagon, and then we had a great night of conversation and flirting and increasingly passionate kissing, before walking back to her place.

I was more drunk than I realised, but completely in control of my thoughts and kept thinking, ‘Is this it? Could this be it?’ Before I knew it we were on her bed, then becoming naked - a new first for me – and then we were doing all those things I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to taste. And it all felt so natural.
For a first time, I would guess it was pretty good. The only flaw was that I was a bit too inebriated to, (there's no other way to put it, sorry), actually cum. But I had my first taste of actual, real sex, giving and receiving oral, and intercourse. I had actually had proper sex!

As we talked afterwards, I told her that that had been my first time, and she was shocked. She said she never would have guessed, and that it had been perfectly good sex for her, especially considering our states of being at the time. We slept on and off and I felt more than anything, a pleasant calm, a reassurance, like I can’t believe I thought it was anything other than a natural thing to do.

Remembering the night now, a day later, it all seems like a hazy surreal dream. I almost forget that I am no longer a virgin. Everyday things seem surprisingly the same, mundane, same as always... but I feel different inside. I am so far from being experienced but I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I find a new courage to look forward in life with hope and confidence.

Please forgive my getting a little carried away and poetic! But as I look forward to learning so much more, and with my confidence threatening to soar for the first time in years, I feel the need to share this story with you.
I hope this follow up is of interest to you... and thanks for your blog, which I have found a comfort at times.

Best wishes,
Dan’

Well now, as if that were not good enough…there was more to come. Literally. But not before I explain my point. Sex is an important part of our lives. I do not need to tell you that. Learning how to do it well – or even incredibly well - is all just a part of a process. Learning to drive a car, speaking a language, these all require practice and patience. Sex is no different.

Now imagine that some kind, loving person had taken the time to teach you everything you needed to know about the language of love instead of putting up with the fumbling blur of painfully inadequate moves that most of us still recoil from when we recall that inchoate time of our sexual lives. Imagine that our first sexual experiences played out like this:

‘Anyway, I asked her how she felt about me being a virgin to start with and she said she almost felt a bit bad for ‘corrupting’ me, but not really because I was so obviously happy with the ‘corruption’. She is moving overseas at the end of August. We both knew this when we hooked up so the whole thing has been on a no-long-term plans basis.

And the best bit? She has decided that it is her responsibility to leave the country having equipped me with as much experience as possible by introducing me to all the different elements of sex.

Its really cool to have someone be totally open and honest, showing me things and asking how it is, helping me find what I like or don’t, telling me what works best, encouraging me to explore everything...she always asks if there is anything I want to know, to just ask and she will be honest. Everything is completely relaxed and curious. To be honest, it's like a guys dream come true’.

No kidding. It’s not a dream; it’s a total fantasy! And not only that, but the love gets shared around. Imagine how pleasant it’s going to be for the next lucky lady who gets to spend ‘quality time’ with this unusual young man.

Here is a man who has been taught to talk about sex, to ask questions of his partner, to enquire as to whether one likes this…or that? This is a person who is aware of the fact that what might please one person, might not please another and not to take it personally if they don’t. And whilst the idea of ‘ushering young people into adulthood by teaching them how to make love’ was always going to be an iffy one and clearly open to abuse, it does make you wonder…what are the really important bits of information that we should be telling young people? What would actually benefit their sexual lives? Because lets face it, they are going to have a sexual life whether you think they are ready for it or not so we may as well tell them something that is actually worth knowing.

And as far as I have been able to work out in the last twenty five odd years – and it didn’t happen overnight, I wish someone had spelt it out for me - learning how to communicate with a partner is the single most important path towards pleasure that one can walk. And it works both ways. Here is why….

‘Hi Kate,

Do you remember emails from a guy called Dan who recently lost his virginity to a lady? Well, I am that lady that you sounded interested in hearing the other side of the story from.

I will admit I was shocked when he told me he was a virgin - for a couple of reasons, number one, I wouldn't have guessed it because we were both drunk and I just thought maybe it had been a while for us both and number two, to have the balls to admit something like that to a complete stranger took guts.

After he told me I was in a state of shock. I think the best image is to liken me to a goldfish. Not much sentence making was going on but I realized he had chosen to tell me so I said it was all OK even though inside, I have to admit that I panicked a bit.

Afterwards, I went off to work and thoughts started flashing through my mind like why me? I don't have anything good to offer! I’m not sure I want to corrupt him. I'm not good enough for this role. Then I just decided that it was meant to be, that for whatever reason he had chosen me and so I decided to take him under my wing and find ways to make it fun but educational.

We explored what he liked and then he explored what I liked but I always made sure that he got to try everything he fancied and I got to do the same. I did point out though that everyone was different and it’s all about communication but that it didn't have to be verbal. Anyway, we took it from there and it was great to see the change in him and how much more confident he was around women, and blokes for that matter. I think a weight has been lifted off his shoulders.

When I first met Dan, I had just come out of a very long-term relationship and you fall into habits and we had stopped exploring so it was great to meet someone who I felt comfortable with that I could explore and reconnect those feelings of desire without feeling judged or embarrassed.

It was as much learning for me as I think it was for him to be honest. But fun too and I believe everything should have an element of fun or positivity to it or why bother! It brings a smile to my face knowing that he will at least be going out there with a few tools that he can develop and have fun with.

From

The partner in crime :-)’

Let that be a lesson (in love) for us all. Amen. Today’s sermon is over.

virginityproject joins us from The Virginity Project

No position is safe!

2009-06-22T10:48:00.003-04:00

Surfing on the web lately I've seen that ad space on many gay-themed sites has been dominated by a really effective "protect yourself"-ish campaign from Harlem United Community AIDS Center. Although Harlem United's page has a pretty mellow (okay, maybe a little lame) site that seems designed for easily intimiated old people, the landing page for the ad campaign (Man-Find.com) has a wholly Manhunt-esque vibe that talks explicitly and quite colloquially about sex and sexually transmitted infections.

See below the cut for some examples (NSFW):

- HIV Loves Tops
- Tom, Dick & Harry
- Top, Bottom, Vers

(All of the banners are also viewable on the Man-Find site. If your browser has Flash installed, you should be able to open these files directly through your your browser.)

I really applaud the Community Center for not only having the guts to really do something much more explicit than their other, more innocuous web presence in order to reach certain gay subcommunities...but also for rectifying some heresay about the spread of HIV. Most sex-ed campaigns will just advise "be safe!". I feel like those campaigns, for some groups of people, have kind of lost their effectiveness. Where gay identity has divided into many, many subcommunities, the simple "be safe" is not as effective -- certain subgroups of gays have justified unsafe practices because they might identify with a subgroup they think is not at risk. Take a look at the "HIV Loves Tops" ad above -- just because research shows that tops can catch some STI's less frequently than bottoms does not mean that they shouldn't practice safe sex.

I also think that it's really quite great that dating/sex web sites for gay people are now really becoming public spaces. It used to be that sites like Manhunt and Gay.com were used because they were good places for closeted people to hook up without too much risk that they would be exposed. Not so much the case anymore. I'm all for creating safe spaces for people who are closeted to work through their issues, but when it comes to sex and safe sexual practice, I just can't see from a social policy perspective how an environment like that is really good for mental and bodily health.

The explosion of acceptable dating sites for straight people -- and particularly Match.com's advertising campaign that paints their service as not just a site for relationships but also quite explicitly for sex) -- makes a list of individuals' online images and actions more of a public commodity with each passing day. People have to recognize that almost all of their online activity, with a little work, can be exposed. I think that his exposure can create more opportunities to educate people for the better, like with the AIDS Center's ad campaign.

I understand that exposing communities to a critical public eye can allow all sorts of bad things to happen when the public doesn't like you, but maybe I'm optimistically naive in thinking that this could be really good.

Pass Around Party Bottom

2009-06-16T14:59:00.003-04:00

It surprises me to still hear gay men talk about HIV and say things like, “but you don’t look positive”, or “you don’t look sick”, or my personal favorite, “Oh, I can usually tell just by looking if someone has it or not”. We probably all have our own preconceived notion about what the ‘typical’ HIV-positive person looks like. Before becoming positive myself, the mental picture I naively painted tended to be an older, mustachioed gay man, very skinny, wearing mostly leather, and involved in the types of drugs and sexual adventure that I was too scared to consider. Oh, and don’t forget about the poppers… my HIV-positive mental-man was a total popper fiend.

In all seriousness, a trained physician that specializes in treatment of HIV/AIDS can sometimes spot signs of opportunistic infections, drug therapy side-affects, or other conditions such as wasting in advanced cases of the illness. But most gay men don’t have this training and most HIV-positive men do not have any outward appearance that would indicate infection, even to the trained professional. HIV-positive folks can be very young, very old, and every age in-between. They come from every race, religion and ethnic background. And most of the HIV-positive gay men I speak with appear completely healthy.

A common misconception, especially among younger gay men, is to think that HIV is mostly a disease of older gay men, using statistics that indicate a higher infection rate among older gay men to give them a false sense of security when dating other young gay men. In terms of absolute total numbers that statistic is indeed true (the longer you live, the more chance of being exposed), but that should not give anyone a false sense of security. This statistic from the CDC should encourage younger readers to challenge this dangerous assumption:

“In the 13-to-24-year-old group, the average annual increase was 12 percent (newly diagnosed with HIV infection), compared with a 1 percent decline in 25-to-44-year-olds, and a 3 percent rise in gay men 45 and older.”

The article also implies that younger gay men have not had an opportunity to witness the serious consequences of HIV/AIDS. Most did not grow up seeing friends waste away and die around them, like those living in gay communities in the 1980s.

HIV should not be viewed as just another nuisance condition that can be easily treated by simply popping a pill. It’s not necessarily the death-sentence it was just 15 years ago, but it’s not a walk in the park either. It can be emotionally devastating, extremely expensive to treat and future progression of the disease, even with the fabulous new medications, is indefinite and full of potential health issues.

How could that sweet, innocent looking 18 year old boy possibly be HIV-positive? Well, maybe he’s not the complete virgin you think he is. In fact, maybe he’s the pass-around-party-bottom, just off the plane from a party week in Palm Springs, and just can’t get enough cock. He hasn’t ever been tested, so as he gazes at you with those big doe eyes and bats those long lashes at you, he’ll say with complete confidence, “I’m negative”.

The women of the Star Trek movie: standing by their men

2009-06-09T11:31:00.006-04:00

(Cross-posted in part from The Mongoose Chronicles. Possible spoilers inside.)

Over at my place today, I'm discussing Star Trek the film, and to what extent it lives up to expectations, where they exist.

I focus on the character Uhura, played by Zoe Saldana, of whom I was glad to see the following: she was a top cadet; she was assertive and didn't feel cowed by her relationship with Spock into being shoved aside in the interest of propriety; we were told exactly what she did on the ship instead of her just seeming like a random ensign with a receptionist's headset (the original Uhura was a communications officer before being promoted to Lt. Comm. and then Commander, but somehow, in those early episodes, she seemed like an intergalactic receptionist to me. Her presence was, of course, nonetheless important for the visibility of black actors and reinforcement of black culture in the 1960s - reasons that extended beyond the confines of the story) and she got to use those skills in saving the galaxy and all that.

Here's what I wasn't so thrilled about: she was a role, not a character. Uhura, I felt, had one dimension. She was to be the woman in the film who was not maternal, and was to represent another part of womanness: the fearless, educated, unimpressed-by-random-flattery type of woman. And she did all that; that is, she stood, in one dimension, as that. But she did so without having her character well developed. She was really a paper tiger; and I didn't actually mind her stripping down scene and the fact that she wore miniskirts. I felt it was real. Women high-achiever types are also sexual and attractive: that's fine. In fact, that's great. But at the end of it all, she was really just Spock's girlfriend, wasn't she? And that worked well for Spock's character - it made him seem reachable and helped make us care about him. But Uhura as an individual fairly disappeared into yet another woman who, like Kirk's and Spock's mothers, was just rooting for a man to survive. And I get the impression that any individuality we saw was all about Zoe Saldana: about her great screen presence as an actor, and not so much about the dialogue, depth and direction given to the character that had been envisioned as Uhura.

Thank goodness for Roddenberry's initial creation that we even have this fairly strong character - even if she is more caricature that character - at all. The first significant woman character we see, Kirk's mother, is giving birth to the eventual saviour of humanity; indeed this seems the point of her rescue. And the other main woman character is Spock's mother, who carries the shame of having given birth to a half-breed, and appears in cloak and shadow, also later having to be rescued, and then perishing. The women in the Star Trek film, then, are, in the main, supporters of and overshadowed by heroic men. And one can only hope that in any movie sequels from this point, they become unstuck from this predictable and wholly unimpressive dynamic.

Afro-diosa joins us from The Mongoose Chronicles.

I <3 iTunes!!!

2009-06-06T10:54:00.002-04:00

THIS is AWESOME!!!

Snaps to iTunes for getting it together.

Fried Rice: A Failed Attempt at Subverting Sexual Racism, pt. 2

2009-06-03T12:28:00.005-04:00

It took me a good amount of time for me to gather my thoughts on how to continue this series on sexual racism in the gay community. This is the second post in a series of undetermined length of posts on my personal journey attempting to navigate the circuitous politics of race and attraction in the gay community. Read part I here. Without further ado, here's part II:

It is New Year's Eve in New York City, and "new" is definitely the word du jour. It's a night of many firsts: My first New Year's in the City; my first New Year's with friends and not family; my first New Year's drunk. My roommate has dragged me to a party being thrown by his rich boyfriend and his equal parts loud, drunk, and obnoxious friends. The Bridge and Tunnel crowd pack the SoHo brownstone to the brim as they clamor for more alcohol at the open bar. Not even the disdainfully privileged surroundings of Yuppie excess could quell this feeling of anticipation and excitement at the prospect of a new year, a page turned, a fresh slate. As I said my farewells to 2008, I bade adieu to the Bush Administration, to my life as a student, to unemployment, and... to the last link in my long chain of relationships with Rice Queens.

2009 promised to be a year full of opportunity, driven by my personal mandate to initiate the Sticky Revolution: an act of radical anti-racism by rejecting colonialism and supporting my community of fellow Gay Asian men through deliberate valorization of a de-valued and disenfranchised group. Asians dating Asians - the quintessential "f- you" to Euro-centric beauty standards and fetishists. We don't need your validation, mainstream gay culture. We are a self-sustaining nation of queer Asian fierceness! And we don't need nor want your approval.

Filled with the vigor imbued by my quest for racial justice, I set out to find my partner-in-crime, my brother-in-arms, my comrade, my fellow radical queer Asian freedom fighter. I ditch the SoHo party and made my way to one of my regular haunts, a gay bar in Hell's Kitchen. Into the mouth of the lions' den, I thought to myself as I flashed my ID to the bouncer. Not five minutes into wading through this very standard gay bar for the young, the white, and the restless, I found myself deflecting the attention of two bar regulars. White, skinny, and pretty; the pair always seems to be there when I show up. Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum always insist on greeting me with a high pitched "Clarence!" Clarence, I eventually discovered, is their Asian roommate to whom I allegedly bear a resemblance. Clearly, we are the same person, interchangeable, and therefor it is completely acceptable to call us by the same name.

Undeterred, I made my way to the dance floor. Sweaty and numbingly loud, I started moving to the music, trying to lose myself in it. Having devoted a good portion of my college career to dance, I have always viewed the act as a profoundly cathartic experience. What better place to excise my past self than the heart of the malfeasance? Then, like some cheesy scene in one of those insufferable dance flicks, our eyes meet through the crowd.

He is tall, handsome, and most importantly, Asian. With a strange sense of fate, the crowd parts allowing us to meet. No words are spoken at first, we just dance. (Yes, I am aware of how corny this is... stay with me, I promise it's worth it.) I eventually get his name (Tim), and his number. We dance for a while before parting. I leave the bar that night filled with pride. I have taken the first steps in my Sticky Revolution.

Fast forward a month, and Tim and I have been dating for a few weeks. He's a former soldier, Filipino-American from Upstate New York. He grew up and army brat and followed in his father's footsteps in joining the army. He served for several years in Korea and elsewhere before receiving an injury which disqualified him from service. Discharged honorably, he found himself in New York City, sleeping on a friend's couch and trying to make ends meet with a job bar bussing. He's funny, refreshingly different from me, and on top of it all, he's quite the looker. Almost too good looking. I don't believe my luck! I'm by no means top-tier in the looks department, so bagging the hot Asian-American army-vet-turned-artist seems all too perfect. My Sticky Revolution had started off without a hitch! Or so I thought...

It's late and we're on one of our usual dates: a bar crawl. He likes to dance and easily becomes bored, so I constantly find myself hopping from one club to the next, in pursuit of that increasingly evasive good vibe. The date hasn't gone particularly well. It's the first time we've gone out with my friends, and he's been distant all night. Disappearing for ten, fifteen minutes at a time, chatting up other guys in front of me, acting very dismissive of my presence; I'm taken aback by the change in his character. My friend who joined us earlier in the night informs me that he's trying to make me jealous and want him more: ensuring that I know that being with him is a privilege, not a right. I'm in a sour mood and he can tell. As we sit in the cab on the way to our next destination he asks me a question on a topic I have been dreading: race.

"So, what kind of guys do you usually go for?" comes the thinly veiled inquisition on my racial preferences. Heck, I've used that line when I try and sniff out fetishists. Isn't it enough that I'm clearly into you?! I think to myself.

"Oh, you know... I don't know, I don't really have a type. It's more about a guy's personality that I'm attracted to." I respond, attempting to dodge the question.

He presses further, "No, but you've gotta have a type. Tell me about your exes. I don't know anything about them."

Who is this guy? Exes are the last thing I want to be talking about. "Well..." I pause, considering how to bring up my problematic dating history, "My type is kind of all over the place. I've dated a lot of different kinds of guys." I can tell by the look in his eyes this is an unsatisfactory answer, "I used to date a lot of rice queens, but I'm kind of done with white guys for now."

As the words leave my mouth, I want to stuff them back inside.

"Oh, so is that what this is about?" He asks almost with a snicker, as if he knows that he's caught me in some kind of trap. "Are you just going to go back to white guys after you're done with me?"

I can hardly believe this is happening. The same paranoia I felt when dating white men, was being aimed squarely back at me. What could I say? In some way, yes, I sought out Tim because of his race. It proved to be an important quality in my search for a relationship free from racial tension and power imbalance. I had never been with an Asian guy, and it was an experience I had avoided for too long. I have always viewed having a healthy attraction to Asian men was a way for me to personally find beauty in myself; but it was far from the most defining part of his identity I was attracted to. I thought that I was doing something good: radically resisting a racist society by celebrating what the hegemonic culture discards and abhors. But with the tables suddenly turned, had I become everything that drove me to this point?

Moreover, is this part of the self-hatred that has been ingrained in our Asian American minds? The idea of dating another Asian guy seems to require some cognitive leap, some justification, for seeking out a relationship with an Asian man. Do white people have this dilemma when approached with prospective partner of the same race? Do white people question whether their white partner's desires for them is motivated by race?

This would be the last time I would see Tim. To this day I wonder what spurred his comments. I had never mentioned his race while we dated. Nor had I discussed my personal divorce from the colonial schema of the rice queen. Was he responding to some unspoken offense I had committed? Had he dated Asian men before me? Was this uncharted territory for him as well? I can't help but wonder if perhaps we were both more alike than either of us realized. Driven apart by our mutual suspicions.

to be continued...?

Kids in our Hood

2009-06-01T20:48:00.005-04:00

I think a lot about how kids interact with the world. They've certainly got a lot to deal with -- not only with regard to (re)fashioning their identities along society's pretty intense and panoptically-imposed rules about gender and sexuality, but they have to do all of this while integrating in schools. I think that kids, in some way, understand that these educational institutions are where they will be, in more ways than one, stratified and sorted into adulthood.

I've been reading some research lately about single sex schools, and it's really very interesting. I'm not at all opposed to single sex schools; I think that they may in some ways be a very, very productive space for certain students. I'm also starting to think, with regard to boys and boys' education, that they may be a curious kind of answer to some of the most dismantling aspects of hegemonic masculinity plaguing Western society. Here's why:

When boys are educated with girls in the same school I think that gender issues become much more difficult to identify and address. While teachers can do a great deal to manage gender disparities in the classroom, to identify bad hegemonically masculine behaviors and rectify issues, I think that hegemonically masculine behaviors often manifest de facto -- the teacher can't hear every conversation and manage every interaction students have. In (certain) single sex schools, I think that the fact that they are all boys allows teachers to teach and discipline as if they are all masculine individuals, naturally subject to the rugged and turbulent rules of a potentially violent masculinity. Teachers might be more strict with boys in certain ways; they might run them til' they're tired outside, they might integrate stories about sports and athletics into curriculum. In doing so, they play to the rules of hegemonically masculine behaviors, and because of that might actually achieve great success in schooling. When kids are raised at a young age to idealize hegemonic masculine ideals, they respond to schooling methods aimed at boys with those identities.

So a) I can't really prove any of this, but maybe it would be a fun research project some day. But b) I notice, from talking with parents with young kids, that boys by the age of 4 are much quieter than girls. Parents are confused as to why their sons inexplicably become anxious or unsociable, and try to explain the curious difference through biological naturals. I think it could be something more than that. I think it's a sign of boys struggling to refashion themselves into boys, into boys that become men.

The Virginity Project: Dave Heart

2009-05-28T07:15:00.004-04:00

Virginity loss is a funny old thing. I can’t tell you the amount of times people have looked aghast when I have told them that I have interviewed men as well as women. Almost as if virginity loss is somehow less important or insignificant to the male members of the population.

Well, we all know that a woman’s virginity has traditionally meant more to members of the male population. Since the beginning of time, or at least since man had a sense of ownership - whether it be a house, some land or a cow - a daughter’s virginity has been something to value for a man. Because a virgin daughter will ensure that when the time comes, a father’s property will be passed onto the correct heir, and not some interloping farm boy who caught the eye of his febrile daughter. I am veering off point here, virginity loss nowadays is every bit as important to a man but for a whole bunch of different reasons.

Here in the west, virginity has been grabbed and appropriated into the marker of manhood. I cannot tell you how many sad emails I get from young men who don’t feel like men because they have not gotten around to having penetrative sex. Because for better or worse, we use virginity to define how sexual we are, and therefore how grown up we are, despite the fact that any fool knows how incredibly sexual you can be without ever putting a penis anywhere near a vagina. Heck, daughters of a bygone era were expert in doing such things in order to save daddy’s embarrassment.

And so it goes. Virginity loss is the ultimate goal for most men, asides from giving into rampaging hormones of course. But hormones or not, this is a hurdle that must be jumped at any cost. And sometimes it has to be done even if you don’t feel like it. And in the case of today’s correspondent, sometimes with the gender that you don’t want to do it with. Forty two years old and from a solid working class Irish background, homosexuality was never mentioned in Dave Heart’s household. But Dave was only too aware of what direction his life was going. But at least he saves the best for last - because when he does finally get down to doing what he instinctively feels is right, it doesn’t disappoint.

Furthermore, he sees how this, much more significant experience plays out over the rest of his life. When he comes to sit and tell me this story many years later - for this story is one that I conducted in person for my book - he tells me that losing his virginity for the second time changed him and that to this day, it still defines how he has sex.

Dave Heart. Born 1967. Lost virginity aged 18 and 21.

The first sexual encounter I had with a girl was on a train station and it’s a bit crude but it was the first time I’d actually tried to use my hands and I couldn’t find it! She was like, ‘What are you doing?’ and then the train came, thank god. It was a nightmare. Bracknell Train Station at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night. Dark, raining and I’ve got my hand up this girl’s skirt and I didn’t want to do it, I just felt like I should do it.

I knew I was gay when I was fourteen years old because I used to masturbate over boys. I never told anyone, I kept it all inside. I remember the first gay character on EastEnders. My mum was like, ‘That’s disgusting’. I remember sitting there thinking, oh my god, that’s me. My parents have totally accepted me as gay now but sex didn’t rear its head at all in my family. No, it was a case of any sex on TV, any naked bodies, and my mum would be shouting, ‘Turn it over George. Turn it over!’ at my dad.

I used to have these secret fantasies in my head with blokes I was supposed to be friends with. One in particular, Chris, was gorgeous in every way. Fantastic personality, fit body, we used to go to the gym together but he never knew how I felt. I used to sit and watch him through the smoky steam room air. I’d have my girlfriend there with me but I didn’t exude any of the signs of being gay. It was such a weird situation.

No one had any idea that I was actually still a virgin either. The word was bandied about a lot, almost as an insult, ‘Oh so and so is a virgin’, especially if they were not very good looking. I never got called a virgin but I was one. I always had girlfriends and I always had the best looking girls as well. The problem was with the girls themselves. They would want to have sex with me and I was the one that was always making the excuses, so I would just have to dump the girl and move onto the next one. It was just like a cycle and I kept on doing it.

The first time I had actual sex, I was eighteen years old. I had joined the RAF and I was living off unit in a house with two other guys. Her name was Mary and it was really difficult for me. It was a case of having lots to drink first and lots of kissing. I had the smallest room in the house but it was right next to the toilet so I could run in there, get everything working and then run back into the bedroom, jump on top of her, and try to find the right place to put it. She later claimed that she was pregnant and had had an abortion. She only told me because I saw her crying at the RAF club. That really shocked me. I still went out with girls after that but only to be seen with someone on my arm, I didn’t actually physically have sex.

I didn’t have sex with a guy until I was twenty-one years old. I got sent to Norfolk RAF and as soon as I arrived I met a guy called Matthew. He was an RAF Steward and straight away I thought there was something between us. He was cute and we got on really well.

It was a new base and I’d gone from being in the same place for four years and feeling very secure to being somewhere where no one knew me. So in those first two months, we spent a lot of time hanging out together and I could feel that there was something there, some sort of electricity. It was amazing. But I didn’t speak to him about it because I had no idea if he was gay or not.

We’d made a few friends there and we used to go out together a lot. One night there was a party in the RAF mess with all the crew and I remember thinking that I might actually be in love with this guy and he had no idea. Then at the party I saw him kissing a girl.

I was absolutely gutted. I was so upset. I made my excuses and left the party. I went back to the base and sat on my own in the TV room. I wanted to cry, I was so pissed off. Suddenly, after about twenty minutes, Matthew appeared and said to me, ‘Where did you go? What’s wrong?’

‘Oh nothing’, I replied, ‘I just wanted to go, I didn’t feel very good’.

He came over and sat next to me and we were just looking at each other and that’s it, we started kissing. It was risky, this was 1986 and it was still illegal to be gay in the armed forces. And we were doing it in the TV room, with the lights on, in an RAF block with windows and no curtains. Snogging as if our lives depended on it.

Then we went to his room and just snogged and clothes started coming off and I remember feeling the heat of another man’s body next to mine for the first time and it was perfect. And that’s when I first had sex with a guy. It wasn’t just doing a deed; it wasn’t just fumbling in the dark with someone you’ve never met before and forgetting about it. It was a build up of two months of tension and it was fantastic. It was a magical feeling. To actually see someone else’s parts, aroused, and feeling them next to you, on top of you. It was just really, really good.

I was in love with him. We had a really intense relationship, partly because we had to keep it quiet. It was a big secret and no one but us could know. Eventually we decided to move off unit together. People just thought we were mates although I did start to think that they might have their suspicions. And then I got sent to the Falklands for four months, which was awful because we had only been together for a year and for the first time in my life, I was in love with someone and the feeling was being reciprocated.

I used to write to him and tell him how much I loved him and missed him and I can’t wait to, you know, get his cock in my face or whatever, and then one day, he read one of my letters, put it in his pocket and it fell out. It was picked up by an RAF policeman. He read it and because what we were doing was illegal, he went to his boss and reported it.

I had been in the Falklands for a couple of months and I got a phone call to go to the police office. In the back of my mind I just knew that they knew. I went in and sat down with an RAF policeman and he was very nice to me. He asked me how I was finding it in the Falklands and then he said, ‘I have to ask you a question now. We believe you are having a homosexual relationship with a Mr Matthew Knowles’. I remember hearing the words and the room spinning. And then I just thought what’s the point in denying it. There’s no point, so I just said, ‘Yes, I am’.

Our relationship did continue for a while after that but we broke up badly after a year and a half. I came home one day and he had gone. I did see him many years later. I was shopping in town and went into a gay bar for a drink and there he was. There was this guy, the man that I had lost my virginity to, we had changed our lives together. I went back to his hotel with him and it was so nice to see him and we had lots to talk about but I didn’t fancy him anymore, my first love as it were.

My attitude to sex now is that I don’t really like one-night stands. As a gay bloke, I don’t do saunas or get my cock out down at the park. Any important relationship that I have had, I have always liked somebody for ages before anything has ever actually happened. I think perhaps that first experience with Matthew has stayed with me because what I really yearn for is that feeling of electricity between two people. I want the build up of tension. I want to get into the package, you know, to have the box and then actually open it up and see what is inside. I think it has affected me, I hadn’t actually consciously thought that before now, but it’s changed me, it has defined how I have sex.

Virginityproject joins us from The Virginity Project

BREAKING NEWS: California Supreme Court Upholds Gay Marriage Ban

2009-05-26T13:18:00.003-04:00

Not entirely unexpected but deeply unfortunate news comes out of California this afternoon. The California Supreme Court announced its ruling on the challenge to Proposition 8 by Same-Sex Marriage activists, who argued that the voter referendum constituted a revisal of the Constitution rather than an amendment. A revisal would have required a full vote of the legislature in addition to a vote from the people. However, the court also ruled that those same-sex marriages performed during the time when it was legal in California will remain valid marriages.

Two steps back, one step forward. Now, the only avenues for same-sex marriage in California will be through another state-wide voter referendum, or through federal policy.

You can read the majority opinion, yourself, here.

There are several rallies and protests around the nation. Check out DayofDecision.com to find your own. Those of you in New York City can find info here. Act up and join your queer siblings in pushing for marriage rights!

Lawrence King's Memory Shat Upon By CA Judge

2009-05-13T16:36:00.004-04:00

News comes out of California that a Ventura County Judge ruled that the parents of Lawrence King, the young boy who was shot twice in the head by his homophobic classmate early last year, can sue his foster home, Casa Pacifica, for negligence. His parents and the judge believe that there is just cause that the foster home counseling and allowing King to express his sexuality and gender identity via make-up and high heel shoes endangered the child and led to his death.

I am so utterly stunned that I am too shocked to be outraged. Yes... Lawrence King was shot multiple times because of something he did. That is essentially what the judge has ruled.

Bull. shit.

I find it very unfortunate that King's parents want to turn their grief over their son's death into an attack on possibly some of the few people in Lawrence's life that made his life livable. Counseling Lawrence to learn how the express his sexuality and gender identity in a safe and positive way at a young age is no more dangerous than teaching a girl to study science, or an immigrant child to be proud of and share his cultural heritage. These identities are not inherently dangerous... what is dangerous is the savage way these identities of difference are policed by the mainstream culture.

To argue that teaching Lawrence to be himself is to also bring the threat of violence to the child is to say that Lawrence's self is the one that is dangerous. It is an implicit condoning of the hate-filled murder and condemnation of all queer and gender non-conforming people, children included.

But we have heard this same argument before: "If she didn't want to get raped, why did she wear that short skirt?" "What was she doing on the corner at 3am, anyway?" "He should have known better than to walk in that part of town."

These arguments not only deflect the blame on the rightful party, but place the responsibility of ensuring their safety via non-offensive existence on non-straight, non-white, and non-male persons.

Is the personal always (effectively) political?

2009-05-06T00:10:00.002-04:00

Cross-posted from The Mongoose Chronicles

Last Wednesday, women in Kenya, led by The Women's Development Organisation coalition, imposed a week-long sex boycott aimed at pressuring the country's two power-sharing leaders Prime Minister Raila Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki into resolving their conflicts. Amid fears that current rows could see a renewal of the election violence of 2007, in which 1500 people were killed and 300 000 forced from their homes, the women's groups have solicited the support of sex workers as well as Ida Odinga, wife of Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

Patricia Nyaundi, executive director of the Federation of Women Lawyers (Fida), one of the organisations in the campaign, said they hoped the seven-day sex ban would force the squabbling rivals to make up.

"Great decisions are made during pillow talk, so we are asking the two ladies at that intimate moment to ask their husbands: 'Darling can you do something for Kenya?'"

It is the kind of tactic that certainly draws attention to power-sharing tensions in the country, but how valuable is it as a feminist action, and how effective can it be as a political strategy? Writing in the Guardian, Lola Adesioye declines to comment on the latter, but offers that regarding the former:

..this boycott is significant as it says a great deal about women's progress, the way in which women are reconsidering their role in Kenyan society and how they are reclaiming power where they can.

[...]

Africans can be pretty conservative on topics such as sex. For the older generation in particular, discussing sex in public is something you just don't do. In addition, unlike in the west, you tend not to hear African women sitting around talking casually and openly about it. Within that framework, taking such a politically-motivated sexually-orientated stance – actively withholding sex for a week and announcing it to the world – is, actually, a very bold and radical move.

[...]

Will this strike achieve its aims? That's debatable. However, even if the government doesn't end its feuding, this modern-day version of Lysistrata has already had a useful effect. It has put the spotlight on women's roles, power and rights and is showing how national politics affects the individual.

For women, at least, a week without sex is worth that.

But even in the context of a society where polygamy is still practiced, where sex is seen as a woman's duty to her husband and family, and where open discussion about sex is considered taboo and un-African, this strike is still a double-edged sword, with perhaps one side sharper and therefore more destructive than the other. Yes, it does represent a big "suck it" to the patriarchy that Kenyan women can declare ownership of their bodies and their sexual agency in this way. But at the same time, it says that this is their only card to play, their only value and their only contribution. And I find that problematic.

Adesioye argues that the strike " has put the spotlight on women's role, power and rights", but has it really? It seems to cast this role, power and rights strictly in terms of their usefulness as providers of sex and nothing else. It does not advance a dialogue on all the cases where even this role, even this sexual agency which is the minimum a woman should be able to exercise, is removed from her in the country's many cases of marital and community rape. It does not associate the lack of political consensus with other realities of women's lives such as insufficient access to water, food, health, education and security. And while it is encouraging to see women declare that their sexual lives are theirs to control or reveal as they decide, if the discourse stops here, then it arguably has done very little to advance women's economic security, their true political engagement, and the overall stability of fair and inclusive governance in that country.

BREAKING NEWS: Maine Governor Signs Same-Sex Marriage Bill

2009-05-06T00:00:00.000-04:00

Governor John Baldacci has signed the same-sex marriage bill, which received final passing in the State Senate with a vote of 21-13. This marks the second instance in which a state legislature has afforded marriage rights to same-sex couples. This bill had to go back for a second round of votes after receiving several edits in the Senate proceedings. Additional clauses forbidding the practice of multiple marriages and polygamy among others were added to make it more palatable to conservative senators.

source

Cinco De Mayo Rant: Essence of Muxe

2009-05-05T18:49:00.007-04:00

For some of you ,today is a holiday commemorating the struggle and resilience of an entire nation, to others it is a day for margaritas and all-you-can drink corona specials. Cinco de Mayo, like most other contemporary holidays, is just another marketing gimmick rooted in the fading memory of past historical and cultural richness. As a Mexican, it is a day for me to remember the triumph of my ancestors against European invaders and the great pride that comes with being the child of a revolutionary and resilient people.

As a child I was taught to be proud of my Mexican identity; I was also taught to look up to and admire certain cultural and behavioral values that prevail within Mexican culture, which included a considerable degree of Machismo. My family never truly promoted machismo, but the general ether of the culture in which I was raised was riddled with messages of male supremacy embodied by Ranchero culture. Mexican icons like Pedro Infante and Vicente Fernandez set the standard for males by creating glorified masculine archetpyes of the noble Vaquero male.

Few know, however, that this stereotypical macho imagery associated with Mexican culture is the relatively young and spoiled child of imported western values and Pan-American frontier culture; indigenous cultures had different ways of perceiving gender roles as is the case of the Zapotecas of Oaxaca.

Oaxaca, a state largely populated the indigenous Zapotecas, is a cultural oasis offering relief and tolerance for third gender individuals. In the last century this third-gender culture has birthed the modern incarnation known as muxeidad, the essence of the Muxe. The Zapotecas see the Muxe as third-gender individuals who are gifted and important fixtures of their community. Much of Muxe culture today is the hybrid product of contemporary Mexican LGBT culture and the native third gender cultural legacy of the region.

The Muxe play major roles in their society without encountering many of the restrictions that would be imposed on them in other parts of the world such as: holding public office, being community leaders, etc… Ironically in a nation like the United States, which is praised for its cutting edge modernity and progress, is far more medieval in its treatment of third-gender individuals.

The repressive political atmosphere of our time forces people to de-humanize themselves into American typecasts in order to be eligible for political office; there’s no room for individuals whose human nature deviates from convention and is often the source of undue scandal and prejudice. At some point in my life, when I was confronted by the choice of pursuing a political career at the expense of my freedom of expression or the choice of owning my gender and jeopardizing my viability for political office, I chose the latter. Maybe some day people will not be forced to decide between living fruitful human lives and being able to hold political office. Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

Housekeeping, 5.3.09

2009-05-03T11:37:00.003-04:00

+ news +
New Hampshire? What about the COOL states!!,
Hate crimes bill passes house,
and Are we putting to much pressure on Obamz? for the week.

Sincerely,
ts

Miss California means No Offense

2009-05-01T14:06:00.001-04:00

So we've all heard about Miss California's view on gay marriages. (Although she starts by saying she thinks we live in a land where you can choose same sex marriage or opposite sex marriage .... uh I live in Illinois and last I checked I couldn't.) In "her country" she believes marriage "should be between a man and a woman." "No offense." Um, no, none taken ... I think it's great that you think you can define other people's relationships. Fantastic. Not offensive at all.

But are we surprised? This was the Miss USA pageant, after all. A beauty pageant, for young women to parade their beauty on stage for a crown and a title. One of the most heteronormative displays in our popular culture. Why wouldn't we expect one of the contestants to have a heternormative view on what marriage should be?

Unfortunately, it is the Miss "USA" pageant, and Miss USA should unite the country, not divide. And if Miss California had a better speech coach, she would have said it should be up to the individual states to decide what laws govern it's people. There you go. You get an A in civics. But instead she gave an answer that divided the country, and as much as I think beauty pageants are ridiculous, I'm glad she was penalized for her polarizing, non-BS answer. Come on! It's a pageant. This is no time to have the "courage" to share your real "values"!

But she's not done yet.

Miss California is going to appear in a commercial funded by the National Organization for Marriage. Ironically, an organization that says it is "for marriage" is not really. When I hear that you are "for marriage" I would like to think that you want to give the right to any couple in love ready to make a commitment the right to marry, but sadly, this is America, and I am wrong. National organizations purposely use deceiving names. (I'm looking at you, "Pro-Lifers" ... when are you going to march against the death penalty and war?) Believe it or not, the National Organization FOR Marriage is against gay marriage. The irony is hilarious. And sad.

Miss California seems confused: "Marriage is good," Prejean said at the news conference. So, if marriage is good .... why restrict it? She goes on, "There is something special about unions of husband and wife. Unless we bring men and women together, children will not have mothers and fathers." Hmm. Interesting. The holes in this logic are canyon-sized. Men and women have been "coming together" ("having sex") for years ... that doesn't mean every child has a mother and father present. So straight people ain't so good at always adhering to the 1 mom + 1 dad rule.

Moving on, According to the group, the ad will call "gay marriage advocates to account for their unwillingness to debate the real issue: gay marriage has consequences." This just blows my mind. So you're saying straight marriage (excuse me, the term is now "opposite marriage") has no consequences? Because before crazy Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont legalized gay marriage, divorce didn't exist in this country? Domestic violence never happened among "opposite married" couples. "Opposite" couples never got married for the wrong reasons, never lied, never cheated. The gay couples must have done that!

As much as I hate on Miss California, at least she didn't win Miss USA. At least that shows some sign of hope in this country.

Theatre Review: "Caitlin and the Swan"

2009-04-30T09:38:00.005-04:00

The story of Zeus, in the guise of a swan, seducing the young and beautiful Aetolian princess, Leda, is a relatively familiar story for any classicist buff. The myth sets the stage for some of the most earth-shattering and epic events in the Greek mythos. The union of Leda and Swan Zeus birthed two important female characters: Helen (of Troy) and Clytemnestra (wife of Agamemnon; both key movers in the famous epic tale immortalized in Homer's Illiad.

This myth in a similar way, served as the genesis to the play Caitlin and the Swan which is in its final week at UNDER St. Marks in New York City. The play attempts to wrestle with and reconcile the rape of Leda, and contextualize for our contemporary notions of feminism, sexuality, and gender.

Nestled in a subterranean performance space, I felt excited as I dipped into this cavern of mystery that was Caitlin and the Swan, written by Dorothy Fortenberry and directed by Joshua Conkel. I was prepared for a theatrical mindfuck, which is the only thing one can reasonably expect from a play about a woman having sex with a swan. But, instead, I found a surprisingly intimate and touching play.

Our protagonist Caitlin is a woman I am very familiar with, she is a woman in her 20s, white and privileged. She went to a liberal arts college and took women's studies courses and got all "with it" and "empowered." Filled with feminist ideals about not taking no for an answer, work-life balance, and having it all in spite of the hurdles of living in a patriarchal world, she embarked into the real world ready to change it. However, once in that very real and very patriarchal world, she finds that she cannot single-handedly alter the course of the status quo. Armed with no real marketable skills, she finds herself drifting anchored only by her increasingly gender conformist heterosexual relationship. The tension between the expectations of female empowerment and the actuality of womanhood in patriarchy spill over into poetic metaphor with the recurring motif of bestiality.

The play opens with three women, Caitlin (Marguerite French) and her two college girlfriends, Priya (Shetal Shah) and Rachel (Teresa Stephenson), chatting over drinks in Rachel's yuppie styled abode of domestic bliss. The threesome gossip about former classmates, their jobs, and critique structural sexism in a work-life balance survey disseminated by their alma mater. This opening scene closely resembling a women's studies professor's wet dream of successful empowered womanliness, comes off as a shade pedagogical; as if watching an edu-tainment film in my Intro to Women's Studies course. However the veneer of comfortable feminism is quickly disrupted by the revelation that Rachel, the successful interior designer with the perfect husband and the perfect house, has been having an affair with a pig named Peter. No, not "That man's a PIG!" kind of pig. Swine flu kind of pig. Pink snout, curly tail and all.

Caitlin is plagued by erotic dreams of Rachel and her swine lover. Rachel's wanton descent into the illicit and taboo with her entrance into bestiality deeply shakes Caitlin and her increasingly vanilla and not particularly female-empowered relationship with Doug. Caitlin feels trapped by her domesticity, despite Doug encouraging to seek more challenging work than her SAT tutoring. It is clear that Caitlin is driven by a need to explore the sexually unknown and improper by entertaining herself with the flirtatious affections of her tutee, Bastian (Jake Aron)... and the beautiful Swan (Elliott T. Reiland) which resides in the lake behind Bastian's home. Caitlin struggles between satisfying her hidden sexual urges and her life in status-quo-land.

I understand the metaphorical significance of Fortenberry's use of bestiality in the play, but it comes off as gimmicky and affected. Especially since everyone and her sister seems to be fucking pigs, cats, swans, etc. While the metaphor is powerful, it is overused. With bestiality seemingly commonplace, it undercuts the taboo of the practice; making Caitlin's turmoil all the more puzzling. I applaud Fortenberry's effort in tackling a challenging topic; but frankly, I've seen this play before... and Edward Albee did it better.

On top of that I severely question the ethics of Caitlin's eventual resolution of her bestial itch. I won't ruin the end of the play for you, but suffice it to say that it reminded me a little too much of feminist revenge porn. I don't see how the defilement and subjugation of man is any more livable or ethically palpable than Leda's rape by Swan Zeus.

The set designer, Timothy McCown Reynolds should be commended for making the small space feel much larger than it actually was. However, someone please tell director Joshua Conkel to get rid of that abysmal excuse for a tree that lives in the downstage right corner of the space. It's pulled out ever so often to signify the outdoors. But it's shoddy craftsmanship and the fact that we can still see the 'tree' during interior scenes, no matter how much you shove it into the corner undercuts its effectiveness. As a professor of mine once told me, "if you can't do it well, let the audience fill in the blanks. The human imagination is far more effective that your propsmaster can ever be." Additionally, not to be nit-picky, but no one in real life cheats out to the front. I understand the need for theatrical blocking, but it is, indeed, okay for actors to face each other occasionally... or even *gasp!* turn around.

The acting was largely acceptable. Ms. French does a quite adequate job handling the role of Caitlin. Her emotional arc really carries the show in spite of what shortfalls it might have. While she does not shine, she does glimmer occasionally. The most successful performance I felt came from Ms. Stephenson as the swine-loving Rachel. Finally, Mr. Reiland, who played both the Swan and Peter the Pig is well cast. While he does not speak his physicality and presence are well suited to his role in evoking feelings of illicit attraction. I was relieved to see the role of the animal lovers played by an actor. I had nightmares of watching women humping plush stuffed animals. By anthropomorphizing the animals our sensibilities are able to more readily identify with Caitlin's plight of being attracted to the Swan, when the Swan is in human form. A clever turning of the tables, indeed.

In all, I felt Caitlin and the Swan was a worthwhile romp. While it needs some tweaking and could benefit from a larger space and better directing, the play was nonetheless thought-provoking and stimulating.

BREAKING NEWS: New Hampshire Legislature Passes Same-Sex Marriage Bill

2009-04-29T16:39:00.005-04:00

Reuters reports: The New Hampshire legislature in a surprise move passed a same-sex marriage bill. The House of Delegates had passed the marriage bill earlier in the week, but it was assumed that the bill would fail in the Senate which had strong opposition to the measure. However, votes were gained from opposing senators when additional amendments were added last minute, which permitted clergy to decline to perform same-sex marriages, allowed couples to choose between marriage certificates with "bride" and "groom" or "spouse," and explicitly forbade polygamy and group marriage, among other things. It is unknown if the Governor will veto this bill. While he is a Democrat, he has voiced opposition to the bill. The bill still needs to go back to the lower House in order for the differences between the house and senate versions to be reconciled. We will likely hear more developments on this story in the days to come.

This marks the second time in a new trend for state legislatures to enact same-sex marriage laws, instead of these rights become achieved through Court rulings, as were accomplished in Massachusetts, California, and Iowa.

You Just Know

2009-04-27T00:00:00.004-04:00

A few months ago. Me, in a lounge with two married colleagues. One of them is pregnant with her second child. We take a break from the day-to-day and talk, of course, of love.

Me: “How did you guys know that you had found the one, that this—this man—was it?”

They look at each other for a moment, and then they look at me. The non-pregnant one says what both want to say:

“You just know.”

Future mommy of two nods her head. Their smiles tell me that they know something that I don’t, that—somehow—they hold a secret that only time and circumstance can share. I can sense in their calm that they live in a different world, one collapsing past, present, and future at once; they seem fueled by nostalgia, contentedness, and an assured hope, all in the same breath. In that unspoken moment, they reveal as much as they can about this thing I did not have: That with it, the beginning is good, life only gets better, and tomorrow holds so much more. That look in their faces: that’s what it meant to “just know.”

+++

Early April. The other side of knowledge.

I know. Maybe I think I know but don’t really know, or maybe I only know part of something bigger and don’t have a complete grasp of the whole project of knowing quite yet. But I do feel like I know, and therefore, for all intents and purposes, I know. I know. I know.

And I could describe for you how I know, but perhaps that ruins the project of knowing for you. You could misguidedly take my knowing and have it prescribe your own search for knowing, but perhaps knowing for you will be different from knowing for me. I could describe for you how I know, but perhaps it only applies to how a gay college-educated Filipino Californian knows that he is head over heels for a gay college-educated Czech/Welsh/Native American Oklahoman. Perhaps it only applies to a dynamic that travels from hot tub, strip club, and bachelor party to email after email, text message after text message, phone call after phone call. Our knowing is a consequence of being 1647.88 miles away from each other—23 hours and 51 minutes if we wanted to make the drive—but feeling as if we are with each other at every step.

I understand the “you just know” moment now, not as a monolithic, universally-applicable signal that the rest of your life has potentially arrived. It is not a secret withheld from you by your friends, who you theorize use “you just know” as code for “I’m gonna fuck with you” or “I don’t really care to describe it.” The truth of “you just know” predicates itself upon its very first syllable: you. I can tell you the story of how Parker and I came to be, but it’s something that will only ever apply to Parker and me. The soaring, anything-is-possible feeling floating between us is something that will only ever exist with us. Romantic comedies, love songs, romance novels: they only provide models for what the effect of love is, but the causes will always be different. To insist that you will feel the same when you find yours is to pretend that we are the same, that we need the same way, that love will provide us with the same gifts. You will know. Only you will know.

And so, I very purposefully leave out the weeks and events that transpired between Parker and me, from that very first fifteen-word email I received at home, to where we are now, seeing no end in sight, planning to see each other very, very soon. Because with love, I’ve discovered, the process of falling may be fun: it can be interesting and illuminating, and it is—as it was with Parker and me—a roller coaster of does-he-or-doesn’t-he. But unlike a roller coaster, falling is not the best part. It’s nowhere near as spectacular as being in love itself. It’s different from flirting; it’s different from dating; it’s a completely other world, and in that way, perhaps it is a secret. But it’s a secret that only Parker and I know, a place—as Keane might suggest—that only we go. The absurdity of love is not that it’s a possession that we must take turns finding; we cannot, unlike many other “goals” in the world, work to make it happen for ourselves (as much as we workaholics detest depending upon fate). The true craziness of love is that we all must wait until it becomes our own, at the wandering intersection of time, context, and another. Someday, when your road matches those roads, you will be well on your way. You will know what I mean just as surely as I know for myself now.

What now, then? What now that I know? Well, past knowing: I don’t really know. I’ve never known before. And so this dating column heads to where it has never gone before: beyond the happiness of knowing, to begin demystifying—or, if I’m lucky, reinforcing—the truths of happily ever after. After all, things with Parker have only just begun. And despite knowing, I am sure there is much more to learn.

I Just Don't Buy It

2009-04-21T08:55:00.003-04:00

I just read this brief article from USA Today about gender/sexuality and identity among youth. There are a couple of problems.

First, the article is a little misleading. Although titled "Young adults 'don't want to be defined by gender, orientation'", the content of the story seems to suggest that this is only true among those who would have identified as LGBT. Second, the write-up suggests that the gender/sexuality rules are more liberating for girls than they are for boys:

"Today, girls are free to do sports and be competitive. No one thought they had to play dumb to get a boyfriend. The women's movement has done great things for middle school girls," she says.

"It's another story with boys. I feel like we're in a time warp. We have not dealt with men and masculinity in a serious enough way," she says.

"Boys police each other. There's no room not to do anything not traditionally masculine."

I agree with most of these points but only in specific contexts. Women's genders/bodies are policed more than ever. Further, as far as romance and wanting to be attractive to boys, I can't even begin to start listing the "rules" girls follow with regard to their identity and presentation of self to be seen as a dating commodity.

THIRD, and finally, one person is quoted saying that:

"we're living in a "post-gay world" where gay celebrities can hawk products that traditionally have been marketed as attractive to the opposite sex. He suggests that society has advanced to the point that companies don't worry about anti-gay bias when seeking spokespeople for products. As examples, he mentioned openly gay actor Neil Patrick Harris as a spokesman for the traditionally male Old Spice deodorant and lesbian talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, who is a spokeswoman for Cover Girl cosmetics."

Is this really true? When I think of The Market and issues of identity, I think of how the market uses gay identities as vibrantly defined categories in order to market to certain audiences. Ellen and NPH (particularly Ellen) have wide appeal, but I still think they have gay appeal. What do y'all think?

Housekeeping, 4.19.09

2009-04-19T01:01:00.002-04:00

+ news +
Why Colbert rocks,
Why Paterson rocks,
and Why Stu Rasmussen rocks (and people fail) for the week.

Sincerely,
ts

"We Are Not a Gay Bar"

2009-04-18T01:51:00.008-04:00

A karaoke bar that operates in a space that was formerly a gay bar feels the need to to proclaim that "we are not a gay bar."

Read the story on chicagotribune.com.

If only the owner had a basic understanding of PR, they could have avoided the protests and backlash and terrible coverage of them in a widely read newspaper. Like, when you open a bar on the site of a gay bar, and you are trying to operate a business that is different, perhaps you should give the bar a new name. Just a thought. Also, it's a bad idea to offend people that frequent your bar, and I'm no lawyer, but it's probably a bad idea to display a message that can and should be taken as discriminatory.

I'd like to give the owner the benefit of the doubt and say that while he is an idiot, I'm hoping that his goal was to inform patrons that in fact the style of the bar had changed. This could have been handled with far more tact, perhaps proclaiming "This is a karaoke bar. Everyone welcome." Or maybe changing the name of the bar to indicate that things have changed.

But unfortunately, I had to click on the "comments" left to the article. I don't know why I do this. I've read enough comments left on articles on the Trib's web site to know how ignorant and illogical most of the commenters are, protected by their anonymity.

Ridiculous things that stood out to me:

1. There is a difference between freedom of speech and discrimination. Also, a bar is in fact a public establishment and therefore cannot discriminate. Now, they didn't post "Gays Not Allowed" but "We Are Not a Gay Bar" comes across as pretty hostile and anyone with any amount of common sense should realize there is a better way to communicate that the style of your bar has changed since the last owners.

2. Just because you think something is immoral doesn't automatically mean everyone will agree with you. Last time I checked this country was founded on freedom of religion, including absence of religion.

3. Just because a gay bar in Chicago posted a sign that says "Bachelorette Parties not allowed" doesn't mean they are discriminating against straight women.

4. If you can choose to be gay, when did all the heteros choose to be straight? I don't remember ever making the conscious decision that I would like to date men instead of women. Yes, technically I could date women if I wanted to, but I don't remember ever choosing not to be romantically/sexually attracted to them.

5. NOT EVERYONE BELIEVES IN THE SAME RELIGIOUS DEITY AS YOU DO. Get over it. I can't stress that enough because apparently enough people don't get it.

6. If someone posted "This is not a Black bar" or "This is not a Women's Bar", would that be OK?

7. "Protected groups" is not like "endangered species." Seriously, what is the average IQ of people that comment on articles on chicagotribune.com? Protected groups is an actual term! And yes, it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. How is it possible to not know that?? These people read news sites, you would think they have a basic understanding of basic laws.

In the end, the commenters remind me that while I may live in my own little liberal bubble, there are crazies out there with crazy views that I just can't wrap my mind around, and they are scary. At this point, it doesn't even matter if the Tribune article didn't state all the facts the way they happened, it brought out the crazy religious homophobes and straight guys who assume all gay men secretly want to sleep with them, and gave my liberal self a scary conservative reality check.

Meanwhile, my friend who has lived in Peoria shared with me that this bar is a pretty divey bar and probably wouldn't stay in business very long anyway. At this point, who knows if anyone, gay or straight, would go there. Maybe the conservative "gays are bad" commenters will go there, just once, to make a point.

The Virginity Project: Brad

2009-04-15T01:00:00.000-04:00

In much the same way that a child brings an over ambitious story to a close by telling us ‘and then I woke up and it was all a dream’, an Irish roman catholic once spent hours building me up to his big virginity loss moment only to cap it off by telling me ‘and then I woke up the next morning and I was no longer a virgin’.

Today’s storyteller will do no such thing.

It's not that I personally really need to know the gory details, although if pressed, yes, I am quite nosy and I am not averse to listening to the juicy bits but even I acknowledge that the moment itself can be a bit of a let down. Getting under someone’s skin is far more interesting.

Getting to know what truly motivates a person to lose virginity is almost always the most fascinating part of getting a new story. Is it lust? Fear? Passion? Insecurity? Or all of the above?

Whatever it is, it is never as straightforward as it seems. And neither am I. Because I am digressing from the point I wish to make which is this: Today’s storyteller is going to focus every little bit of his attention on the moment itself and he’s not going to miss out a single detail. This story is not for the faint hearted I might warn you but it is also, I believe, one of the most significant stories I have ever been sent.

In a world where men and women are frequently jostling for the same piece of territory, it is very interesting to hear a house husband describe the moment when he lost his anal cherry to his high flying wife for the very first time.

‘I can’t believe you published that story on your Blog last week’, my sister said after she had read it. ‘It is practically pornography’.

She’s got a point. Our storyteller doesn’t exactly pull any punches but she followed this up by telling me exactly what I wanted to hear. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It never left me all week’.

If you are contemplating a similar act, you could do a lot worse than to use this story as your instruction manual but the gory details are really not the point for me. Many people will read this story and see the very obvious parallels between this couple’s gender swapping lifestyle and their nighttime antics but what really blows my mind is listening to the story of a man get as close as he ever will to really feeling what it is like to be a woman.

Being female and losing virginity invariably involves allowing another human being into your body for the very first time. This requires an immense amount of trust. And strange feelings, and possibly even pleasure if you are either a. very lucky or b. doing it with someone who knows what they are doing. But however this experience pans out, you are unlikely to forget what it feels like to relinquish 100% control over your own body for the first time to a person of the opposite sex. It’s a pretty major event whichever way you look at it.

I shall say no more and let the words do the talking instead of me. And of course, if you have any words of your own to add, I would be very pleased to hear them.

Brad from Arizona.

‘I am not exactly sure what qualifies as losing one's virginity. I suppose that it's commonly thought to be when one engages in sexual intercourse. By that definition I lost mine when I was eighteen. But that's not what I am writing about here.

I have been married for more than fifteen years and was dating my wife for three years before then. I took her virginity (if that is the right way to put it) two years before we were married, when we were each in our mid-twenties. But that's not what I am writing about here either.

I am instead writing about an experience that, even as recently as five years ago, I'd never thought I'd have had, and until very recently I'd never thought I'd ever mention to another person, let alone write about. It was the time, three years back, when my wife and I engaged in anal sex, with me as the receiver.

I grew up as a sheltered Catholic and my wife was even more so. I had, what in hindsight were awkward, even comical, sexual experiences, in my teens. By the time I met my future wife, Lynette, I was a bit more experienced but still barely more than a rookie, although I didn't realize it at the time. Lynette, however, WAS a rookie.   So by comparison, I fancied myself a real Don Juan. And I was in love with her. Still am.   So I pursued her, relentlessly. She finally gave in and we made love.

I will never forget the look on her face - a mixture of love, fear, helplessness and shame - when I penetrated her for the first time. She was a bit traumatized and confused but in the end very proud and pleased.

We were married two years later and our relationship was very satisfying. Lynette began to overcome all the inhibitions that had been drilled into her all those years. On other fronts, her career as a lawyer was flourishing while mine was just going OK. We decided it was time to start a family, and were very lucky. Within four months she was pregnant. She had planned to take time off work for a while but shortly before she realized she was pregnant she got an incredible promotion at work.

The baby arrived - a happy and healthy boy - and she took her maternity leave. Then came crunch time. Her job was paying too well to turn away from it. So she went back and after a series of false starts I started to work part-time.

That set into motion a series of events that led us to where we are now. We have four kids, Lynette works, and I stay home full time. It's been a hard adjustment for both of us, although I complain louder and longer. Even today, when the world has become so much more progressive and accepting of alternative lifestyles, being a househusband has, let us say, it’s down moments. These changes have carried out into other areas too. Lynette became much more confident and assertive, especially at work.  Her world expanded as mine contracted.

Physically, we have not changed (except for getting older - drat). But on the inside, and how we relate, especially to each other, we have changed. To take one illustration, I've gone from thinking myself as a fulltime worker who happens to be in a part-time job, to a part-time worker with primary duties at home, to full-time dad with plans to return to the labor force, to househusband and corporate spouse with no plans to work again.

Things changed in bed too. Lynette became more assertive, not in an S&M way or anything, but rather more willing to experiment and, quite frankly, more willing to have a good time.

Part of that I chalk up to her maturing and shedding past bad lessons and part of it to her outward-directed life. Years ago she would giggle or cringe at an attempt to give her oral sex. Now she loves it and is quite appreciative of a good effort.

So, three years ago, while we were in bed, she first brought up the idea of anal. I was, to put it mildly, petrified. Visions of ‘being gay’ ran through my head. She assured me I wasn't but I tried to let the topic die. She wouldn't. She brought it up the next morning and eventually we made a date to meet for lunch and go to a sex-toy store, just to look.

We went, we looked, and I was astounded as to how many toys and videos there were about woman-on-man anal. Lynette was amazed too. We both laughed and I found myself going along with things, retreating from a ‘no way’ attitude to one in which I was saying, ‘but that's way too big.’ Eventually we settled for a harness with a dildo on the small side but still long and wide enough to do its damage. The salesman nonchalantly rang up the sale. I went home and she went back to work.

That night I was about as nervous as I'd ever been. She came home and suggested that we do the deed the next day, a Saturday. I agreed. We arranged to have the kids watched by a babysitter, saying we'd be out real late. Instead, of course, we stayed home.

Lynette had made over the bedroom. Lots of candles, burning incense, everything. We took our clothes off, kissed, and took an erotic shower. Very hot and very clean. There was no turning back. She looked at me.

‘Ready?’

‘Yeah. I can't believe we're doing this.’

I went over to the bed and lay down. She went over to a closet, out of my view, and finally reappeared, fully harnessed. I must have gasped. The sight of that missile protruding from her, and meant for me, brought everything home. This was real. I was about to get fucked.

She smiled, sensing my apprehension. ‘Don't worry,’ she said, ‘there's' nothing to be afraid of.’ She lay on top of me, pushed the tip of the dildo to my face and asked me to lube it up. I did, thoroughly. Then she got up, walked over to the stereo, cranked it up to full blast, and came back to bed.

We'd talked about this moment and I remembered the rules.  Be calm. Resist the urge to tighten up. It will fit fine.

‘OK, babe,’ she said, ‘all ready.’

On my back, I spread my legs as wide apart as I could and lifted my bottom up. She looked at me and the next thing I felt was a plastic, sticky object rubbing up against my inner thigh and balls. In hindsight, this was funny: Lynette was a total amateur with the harness and dildo. But at the time I tensed up. ‘It's never gonna work if you're so uptight,’ she said, ‘just relax.’

I tried to. She guided the head with her hand and the next thing I felt was the tip touching my anus. Then, slowly, it began to enter. I tensed up and felt horrible. She withdrew, quietly applied a bit more lube, and returned it to just outside my anus.

‘Try again,’ she said, ‘trust me.’

I did. I put my arms back and got lost in the music, which was pounding and loud. The pushing returned but this time I did not resist. Slowly, slowly, the dildo pressed in and then all of a sudden it just slid forward.

I moaned and gasped, ‘Ohmygod.’

‘Mmmm,’ she said, ‘Here's some more.’

With that, she pushed in even further. Another ‘Ohmygod’ from me. Then the thrusting began. ‘Keep with me,’ she said. I did, mimicking what she'd done for me hundreds of times before - bucking my hips in rhythm to meet her thrusts.  I couldn't believe it.

Then she slowed down, stopped bucking and began to maneuver the dildo deeper inside me. She hit the spot after a while and then I rolled my eyes. Ecstasy. Ready to come. But she moved away.

‘Now,’ I said, ‘do that again.

She did, but moved again, and repeated this several times. I got the picture. No demands from now on. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she hit the magic spot and stayed there.

‘Blast off,’ she yelled, and that's exactly what I did.

It was a mind-blowing orgasm, the likes of which I'd never experienced before. I was joyful and ashamed at the same time. But she wasn't done yet. Back to bucking. This time with greater force. Then slowing down. Then back to the magic spot, but this time she didn't tease. I came again. Then she starting bucking again. I was totally drained, and yet I did my best to keep up with her. Her moves were smooth and not too fast. I met them again. What an odd sensation. It was so impersonal. It was as though my private parts were just there to be used by her. She lay atop me, eyes half glazed, staring into space or at the wall or something, but not at me. After some time, she again stopped, looked down, kissed me, and put her head on my shoulder. Unbelievably, I felt the shaft probe for my spot again. It hit it and just like that I came, though not nearly as much as before. Lynette lifted her head up and looked at me.

‘You're quite the stud, old man.’

In truth I felt like anything but a stud. I was lying on my back in a daze, with semen all over me, dripping onto the sheets, lubricant dribbling out of my anus, and feeling battered. Both reflexively and with a sense of self-preservation, I proceeded to give her oral sex. It was a relief to be back in a more typical situation, one that probably lasted longer than the screwing I had just received. I was shocked when she put the harness back on.

‘Oh no,’ I said, or something like it.

‘Just once more,’ she replied.

I assumed the position, but she asked me to turn over and get on my knees. We were going to do it doggie-style. I acquiesced, and quickly felt her hands holding my butt and then the dildo pressing up against its target. It zoomed in, I gasped, and then it began probing. Again. And again. Finally, it hit the spot, I moaned, got hard and came. Mercifully, she withdrew and we lay next to each other and cuddled. It was over.

We said nothing for a while, just holding each other tightly. Lynette hadn't removed the harness, so the dildo was still on her, pressed up against my stomach, a silent reminder of all that had just happened. And what had just happened?

The physical act had been one thing, and a weird one at that. But the psychological effects were just beginning to waft in. I'd just come about as close as I ever will to experiencing what Lynette had experienced the first time I had screwed her. This was not like my first experience all those years ago, from which I took away feelings of power and exhilaration. To the contrary, this mostly involved powerlessness - being pursued, penetrated, and under the control of another person.

All my life I had been the penetrator and even when the woman was aggressive, there was no doubt as to who was doing what to whom. But now, as the one being penetrated, I was on the other side. She'd gotten me to give it up. Four times. She'd probed, thrusted, and done any manner of other things, all of her own urging and without regard to what I wanted. She had been cool, under control, self-assured, while I'd been emotional, afraid, out of control. And yet, I'd experienced great orgasms, real rock 'em, sock 'em ones. My mind had reeled at the experience; and my body had enjoyed almost every second of it. Even the pain (and there was pain) was rewarded in the end by pleasure.

I told her all these things. She hugged me all the harder and explained how it had been great for her.  She told me how she loved being in charge for a change and how great it felt to be able to control me, as opposed to usually being under my control. She said that what really surprised her was how protective she become of me when she realized that I was now vulnerable to her. (Yeah, I thought sarcastically, you really acted protectively.) She said that she felt like she'd conquered me but at the same time wanted to make sure that I was OK.

She also said, mimicking a cornerstone on which patriarchy is based, that she felt surprised at how easily I'd let her do what she was doing and in a way lost some respect for me. I nodded. I was surprised by that too and a little angry that that was how she felt. After all, I'd just done what she wanted me to.

So that was that.  Since then we have added anal to our repertoire, and I must admit that it is enjoyable but I've never shed my ambiguous feelings about it. Maybe that's part of what makes it so exciting.

virginityproject joins us from The Virginity Project

Groundbreaking Anthology on Asian-Americans in Comic Books Needs Our Help!

2009-04-14T10:44:00.007-04:00

I was introduced to Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology at New York ComicCon, where editor-in-chief Jeff Yang led a spirited discussion on Diversity in Comic Books. As a self-professed comic book geek and an Asian American, Secret Identities really excited me as a dynamic group of Asian American actors, writers, and artists sought to bring the stories of our community into a world with a pronounced lack of diversity. I stopped over at the Secret Identities Blog and was really distressed to hear that the anthology is receiving a lot of push back, nationally, from bookstores and booksellers who refuse to offer them shelf space:

Dear Friends,

During the first leg of our college book tour last week for "Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology", the editors and I made a very disturbing discovery when we made impromptu stops at major bookstores in between appearances:

Bookstores were NOT carrying "Secret Identities" nor had any plans to do so.

We were told customers could place orders at the stores but as far as physical self space? Nada. The situation was the same in the stores around us in Baltimore, D.C., Southern California, and New York. The reason? Well, we’ve been given several of them: “Stores are confused whether the book fits under Asian American Studies or Graphic Novels”, “It’s an accounting error”, “You’ve got too small of a print run”, and of course the popular “E” word these days… “The Economy”.

So I’m finding myself having to appeal to the Asian American Community once again in an open letter as I did 6 years ago for “Better Luck Tomorrow” – asking that readers request the book at their local bookstores and/or order copies online through: Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Borders.com.

The friendly folk at Slant Eye for the Round Eye note that if this anthology was packed with as many non-Asian stars from stage and screen partnering towards this graphic novel anthology... the publicity would be booming around not only the world of comic books, but beyond. The Secret Identities staff has put together a fantastic documentary on what their books is, who is working on it (Keiko Agana aka Lane Kim from Gilmore Girls!), and why it's so important that this book not only is published, but does well, critically and economically. I want to encourage everyone to heed managing editor Parry Shan's call and pitch in and support this fledgling publication! Check out the awesome video below:

An Unlikely Byproduct (What If...?, Part III)

2009-04-13T02:08:00.005-04:00

In the morning, the sun beats through the huge glass door of the mansion office, exposing Parker and me on a hardwood floor, lost in a pile of blankets, sheets, and pillows, the aftermath of a tug of war to keep warm.

The other fraternity brothers bustle in the other room, packing frantically for flights and road trips home, piecing the mansion back together after the weekend’s raucous bachelor party. I bury myself under our covers, shielding myself from the sun, the boys, the reminder that my unexpected two-night fling was coming to a close. It is a fruitless attempt at escape.

I overhear the guys outside, rock-scissors-papering their way to a decision: who’s getting Parker out of the office to make sure he catches his plane? One of them had entered mistakenly in the night. When the door opened, he found us frozen, pretending to be asleep, but betrayed by the obvious—no one falls asleep directly on top of each other. We heard his shock, a surprised “ummmm, go to bed,” and the quick shut of the door. Now they debated who would lay eyes on the assumedly post-sodomic moment: dear God, not me.

Someone mans up and leads a pack to fetch Parker. Underneath the covers, I imagine them standing at the door, silently ooh-ing and aah-ing at us, looking down at our makeshift bed as if we were a freak show at the circus: “And in this ring, ladies and gentlemen, we have what looks like a normal morning-after … but look: it’s two men!” We were an unlikely byproduct of this hypermasculine event, and they couldn’t, despite their machismo, look away. All of us wondered, through the nuances of our individual subject positions, if this had actually happened.

Parker leaves the room quickly. With my flight still hours away, I stretch, my body flattening some of the sheets while pushing away the others. I blink my way into the sun, take a breath, and confront an inevitable end-of-hook-up question: What kind of hook-up was this? And what type of closure does that entail?

I have no ready answers to either question. I exit the office. I find my bag by the entrance of the mansion. I begin packing, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Parker following his ride to the airport, approaching the door. We stand side by side without acknowledging each other: I, intent on my packing, he, checking messages on his iPhone. I want to say something: nice meeting you, have a good flight, let’s stay in touch, SOMETHING. But he is out the door and gone. And I continue to pack the weekend away.

+++

On the long flight to San Francisco, I settle: I will not communicate with him. No emails. No phone calls. Our awkward, unacknowledged goodbye provides proof enough that this weekend was merely fun. I remind myself that not every successful flirtatious or sexual encounter can (or should) turn into something more substantial. I tell myself I need to absorb the excitement of the bachelor party’s shenanigans and learn to move on, that someday I will have an opportunity to pursue a fruitful relationship under less sexualized—and heterosexualized—circumstances. I have never been one to stray from more conventional dating models anyway. I am old-fashioned. I date. I wait. This fleeting, drunken weekend fling was not meant to be anything more than what it was. I will be fine. I will look back at this weekend and laugh. If anything, I’ll see him at the wedding and maybe there’ll be more fun there. But otherwise, I decide that there is nothing more to think or say about Parker. Done. Gone. Filed away into my memories.

Until he emails me. I arrive at my apartment, sit down at my couch to catch up on the weekend’s piling email, and find a short note from him:

I just wanted to say bye since I didn't get to at the house.

And in fifteen words or less, he manages to keep me from shutting the door. His email revives what my heart—but not head—cling to: the naïve belief that anything can happen.