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.
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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
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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.
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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”.
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(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.
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THIS is AWESOME!!!

Snaps to iTunes for getting it together.


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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...?
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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.
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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
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