Friday, June 30, 2006

GayProf is Not at All Self-Indulgent

Apparently every blogger faces this issue from time to time. We all go through periods where our original ideas don’t flow as smoothly as they usually do. Then we start to fear we will lose all of our loyal readers. “No, no,” I hear you saying, “We would never leave you! Hail, GayProf, full of grace! Blessed are you among bloggers, and blessed is the fruit of your mind, the Center of Gravitas. Holy GayProf, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” At least, I am pretty sure that’s what I hear you saying.

Until I can get a friend to come in and jiggle my head, I found a different type of meme over at MaggieMay’s that I will blatantly steal. Here is the idea: You, dear readers, use the comments section on this entry to request a picture of anything from my life that you would like to see posted on my little bloggy. Using the miracle technology of my cell phone and a twitch of my nose, I will fulfill your requests on Monday.

For instance, let’s say somebody in the comments asked to see my NRFB 1978 Mego Wonder Woman doll. I would respond by posting this picture:




Or, suppose that somebody asked to see what most influenced my scholarship, I would post this picture:



Of course, there are some rules. To protect the innocent, I won’t post pictures of people other than me. Likewise, I am not going to take any pornographic/half-naked pictures of myself. I would like to keep my readers, not send them fleeing into the night screaming.

Consider this the lazy-man’s way of stalking GayProf. You can rummage through my life, but I will do most of the work for you. This might also be a means to keep me entertained now that I no longer have cable television. I am depending on you! Just tell me what you want to see and I will go on a photo scavenger hunt.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Pour Me Another, GayProf!

Over the next couple of weeks, I have a variety of things to celebrate. Summer school will soon end. I booked my tickets to return to Paradise Island New Mexico in early July. Time in New Mexico means that I can talk with family and do some partying with my buddy Danny.

Also, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged that Texas needs to fix its voting map to re-franchise Latino voters. Of course, the court did not bother to clarify if the map needed to be redrawn before November’s elections. Nor did the court really strike down gerrymandering in general. Heck, though, with this court I will celebrate any small victory.

Superman Returns also opens, which promises a minor diversion. Like many within my age bracket, the first Superman movie proved formative to my early consciousness. Indeed, I had only ever seen one other movie in the theater before Superman (Star Wars, fyi). In a highly unusual event, my father took me to see the first man-of-steel movie all by myself. Even as a very young lad, I knew that he did not particularly enjoy spending time with me one-on-one. So, having him actually take me to a movie without my sisters really stood out. It’s kind of a bitter-sweet memory thing. You know, the human-side of GayProf.

Annnyway, all that aside, my blog also recently passed the 50,000 visitor mark, which makes me celebrate as well. Blogging has been great because I have met lots of folk I would not have otherwise encountered. I love you all!

How do we celebrate such an event at the Center of Gravitas? By drinking, of course! Well, at least that is when we are not abusing pharmies instead.

When my little bloggy hit 5,000, I created the first version of the COG Drinking Game. It seemed only fair to launch the Center of Gravitas Drinking Game, 2.0 at 50,000. This time around, let’s bring out the Belvedere vodka. It will make it easier for you to ignore that, at 50,000 visitors, I also seem to be out of original ideas for this blog. Hell, by the time you finish with this game, you really won’t care or remember what blog you are reading!

Set ‘em up and take a meander through the archives and see how often you spot the following:

    Take one drink for every use of the word “mediocre.”

    Take one drink for every mention of my impending departure from Texas.

    Take two drinks for every time that I acknowledge that there are at least some redeemable elements in Texas.

    Take three drinks if you think that I am insincere in my acknowledging those redeemable elements in Texas.

    Take one drink for every mention of Mr.Clean and his gay, gay ways.



    Take two drinks if you know that Mr. Clean's name in Germany is "Mr. Proper."

    Take one drink for every mention of Xanex.

    Take two drinks if you think that I might have a dependency problem with Xanex. In my defense, though, I will point out that you are playing a drinking game based on a blog. So, if I have to get treatment, so do you.

    Take one drink for each time I make allusions to New Mexico being the Land of Enchantment.

    Take two drinks if you think this blog is secretly financed by New Mexico’s Tourism and Publicity Office.

    Take two drinks for every appearance of the phrase “progress towards tenure.”

    Take one drink for every complaint about teaching summer school.

    Take three drinks for every time that I mention a slightly disturbing fantasy involving queer sailors.



    Take one drink for every reference to César Chávez.

    Take three drinks for any entry with the words “Job Search” in the title.

    Take one drink for every time I make reference to my liar ex and the many lies he told.

    Take two drinks if you think that I make reference to my liar ex (who told many lies) just a bit too much at this point.

    Take three drinks for every time that either Flash and/or Green Lantern appear on a comic cover with Wonder Woman.

    Take one drink for every time that I mention watching vintage gay porn is allegedly part of my job -- allegedly.



    Take one drink for every mention of a penis or slang that refers to a penis.

    Take two drinks for every mention of a vagina (I can’t be certain, but I don’t think that I ever use slang for vaginas).

    Take one drink each time that I declare myself the most desirable man on the blogosphere.

    Take two drinks if you think that I really am the most desirable man on the blogosphere.

    Take one drink for each time that I base my adult-life decisions on lessons learned from a 1970s television show (like Charlie’s Angels).

    Take two drinks if it seems like I am having a hard time distinguishing between myself and Diana Prince.

    Take two drinks for each time my sidebar indicated that I stalked a dead man.

    Take one drink for every time I post a picture of me for seemingly no reason.

    Take two drinks for every picture of me that has appeared on this blog more than once (I actually have basically three digital pictures of me total that I just keep recycling).

    Take three drinks if you have yet to see my picture and think that I really do look like Wonder Woman in real life.

    Take three drinks for every time I lust after some muscle car.



    Take one drink each time that I hear voices in my head.

    Take two drinks if you now hear voices in your head.

    Super Bonus Round: Fragments of obscure song lyrics still hide in many of my entries. To this date, only Gay Erasmus has ever called me on it in the comments. When you find those lyrics, you can drink however-the-hell much that you want to drink.



Remember, after playing this game, drink two full glasses of water and take two asprin before going to bed. Never, ever, blog and drive.

Monday, June 26, 2006

Pride Round Up

Comments from the previous post have me rethinking that entry a bit. It’s always good for us to bind ourselves with our own magic lasso and think about our assumptions. Only the magic lasso let's us know if we are being faithful to our intent.

In the meantime, it also prompted me to think about the greater variety of responses that many queer bloggers have to notions of pride. Some show ambivalence, others celebration. Some are silly and short, others long and grave. Almost all, though, suggest that we need more discussion of what purpose “pride” serves in the community. Here are a few entries that I have noticed to this point. I don't always agree (or disagree) with all of them and they are in no particular order:

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Pride Still Matters

Queer Pride still matters. This might seem like an obvious statement at the end of a month of parades and parties. Yet, many within the queer community have named pride irrelevant.

Self-proclaimed “post-gays” (mostly middle-class professionals) and certain academics even get paid to disdain things like pride celebrations. The post-gays deride “gay ghettos” and repudiate “in your-face activism.” Post-gays enjoy a comfortable middle-class existence and claim, therefore, that the culture war is over.

Homophobia, you might be relieved to know, just isn’t an issue anymore in the urban U.S., according to post-gays. Post-gays name themselves a higher lifeform and smarter than those queer who live in a gay neighborhood or go to leather clubs. Post-gays don't need those things, so why should any other queers?

When pressed for explanations of their thinking, they turn to a classic move enjoyed by both white-liberals and white-conservatives: they redirect attention by pointing their boney fingers to places outside the U.S. “Homophobia isn’t our nation’s problem,” they say, “it’s really just those poor people in third-world countries who need to catch up to our white, middle-class perceptions of the world. Everything is fine and dandy in the good ol' U.S. of A. compared to those other nations.”

The existence of a greater injustice in another nation does not mean that the lesser injustice in your home nation suddenly becomes irrelevant. Being murdered, we can all agree, is probably worse than having your leg cut off. Yet, living without your leg would still suck. This is just another way to make people of color seem constantly deficient while also maintaining the status quo at home. You get two blocks to progress, TWO!, for the price of one.

What post-gays really mean is that homophobia really isn’t an issue in their very specific lives. Because they don’t participate or live in gay sectors of town, they rush to criticize those who do. Make no mistake: post-gays are not seeking an idealistic sexual freedom. They seek only to validate their own personal beliefs and practices. For them, homophobia isn’t the problem. It’s queer diversity that hurts us. If queers didn’t act queerly or, I guess, all live in the same apartment building, straight folk wouldn’t notice our difference from them.



Likewise, a significant number of queer academics also imagine themselves as being above pride. They pooh-pooh their queer brothers and sisters for “blindly adopting and replicating the nineteenth-century categories of ‘homosexual/heterosexual.’” These academics have used their stunning intellectual powers so that they no longer need such terms. They pull off a neat trick of both claiming that a gay community does not really exist (because it is all imagined) and also state that “gay culture” (which one would think is equally imagined) is vapid and vacuous.

This crew, in my experience, generally show only the shakiest understanding of queer theory. Yet, they are more than happy to use that little bit of knowledge to bludgeoned those around them.

Both “post-gays” and those academics are often fairly mediocre thinkers. They don’t really have a lot to offer us. The media (queer and non-queer), however, gives them oodles of attention. Oddly, even as they repudiate the notion of "gay culture," it never troubles either the post-gays or these particular academics to get a pay check from an all-gay magazine or newspaper.

Their world-view often returns to a fairly simplistic vision where one’s sexuality has little relevance in day-to-day life. Their benchmark for safety stops at people being able to say that they have a same-sex relationship. Almost always, though, when these groups start talking about that nonexistant utopia, they default to visions created under heteronormative standards. They don’t talk of sexual revolt. Instead, they want to blend into existing heterosexual standards. For them, they don’t want a queer community because they imagine being inconspicious in the [straight] larger community is so much better. Gay clubs, pride marches, and even rainbow flags become anathema to them. Well, okay, I must admit that I wish we would get a better flag than the rainbow. That, though, is another entry and for different reasons than the post-gays.

We have listened to what these post-gay types have to say. This doesn’t mean that they have not raised some valid critiques that we can’t address. Hell, a monkey with a machine gun will eventually hit the target if he keeps firing long enough. I certainly agree, for instance, that we have allowed corporations to coopt things like pride celebrations as just another means to sell liquor, cigarettes, and prescription drugs. These types of issues we can address.

Simply believing, however, that homophobia no longer exists does not make it true. Just because you personally did not have your jaw broken doesn’t mean our queer brothers and sisters aren’t facing violence across the U.S. (Yes, even in those allegedly safe urban areas). The threats of violence can be even greater for those in our community with overlapping identities as racial minorities.

Knowing the etymology of the term “homosexual,” likewise, does not somehow make a person separate from the current dominant discourse or political climate. Even Judith Butler, the undisputed queen of queer studies, acknowledges that we often need the modern categories, though socially constructed, when it’s necessary to mobilize for political purposes. She, unlike those other mediocre academics, understands that ideologies about sexuality and gender exercise power in our daily lives no matter how smart we might be. It’s hubris to think one can rise entirely above the discourse that informed our individual knowledge.

Let those, like the post-gays, who dissuade queer unity exist as tacit remembrances of our greater goals for true sexual liberation and diversity. They can be symbols, in their error, representing the true freedom that we wish to achieve as a queer community. We can demand that they be guaranteed personal safety to fulfill their own desires of heteronormative assimilation, if they feel it will bring them personal satisfaction. As we engage in the real fight for sexual diversity, we must also acknowledge their right to safely maintain their errata of opinion as part of that diversity.



Now more than ever, though, we need to respond to any person who wants to dismantle a sense of community among queer folk with suspicion. Pride matters because we, as a queer community, demand that it matters. We exist as a queer community because we imagine ourselves as united in common struggles.

This is not about being proud of simply having sex with somebody of the same sex. Or being proud about having the desire to have sex with somebody of the same sex. There is nothing innately better or worse about those desires and acts.

Pride matters because, in our society, having those desires and pursuing those acts informs our daily lives. We have unique experiences and challenges that hetero folk never imagine.

I do not identify and claim union with a queer community because I am uninformed about the historical processes that created modern assumptions about sexuality. I identify and claim union with a queer community because I choose to align myself with those others who reject the sexual status quo.

Pride matters because we have collectively done much that makes us proud. Each one of us who claims a queer identity has shucked off a life-time of subtle (and not so-subtly) messages that said we can’t have a fulfilling life without being a monogamous heterosexual.

Let’s not pay attention to those in our community who claim that our community does not exist. Those individuals lack relevance. Instead, let’s hold onto each other as we keep fighting for real sexual freedom.


Thursday, June 22, 2006

In Your Satin Tights

Summer School continues to act as my cruel master. I don’t mean that in the fun S&M sort of way, either. I mean this week dragged along at a snail’s pace, yet I also felt incredibly busy. Clearly if my job keeps interfering with my blogging I am going to need to consider a career change. Fortunately, we only have one week left of Summer School.

In the meantime, I have picked up the relaunch of Wonder Woman, though belatedly. Yeah, I went to my local comics store the day after it hit newsstands. Imagine my frustration when I found that it had already sold out. Apparently the owner did not anticipate the obvious demand for the new Amazon Princess. Is nothing right about this town?

I suppose that I could have driven to the other comic book shop, but it is owned by a scary evangelical Christian. I prefer not to patronize the businesses of the evil. So, I had to wait until the first shop ordered more copies.

Now that I and the world have seen the new book, I feel free to talk about it. I don’t tend to do reviews of comics. There are many other bloggers who do a much better job reviewing comics than I could ever do. They simply know more than I know, for starters.



In this case, though, we are not talking about just any old comic. No, no. We are talking about Super Heroine Number One. My chosen avatar.

After reading it, then rereading it, and then sending it to the labs for testing, let me say that I am cautiously optimistic about Wonder Woman’s relaunch. Of course, the fact that she has an openly gay writer (Allan Heinberg) helps, though that did not help that much the first time she had a gay writer. So, here are the 10 things I loved about the new Wonder-Woman comic and the 10 8 things that still make me nervous.

Let's start with the good:

    10. The return of the eagle on her breastplate. I never, ever, liked the “WW” on her costume. Wonder Woman should have an eagle. Period.

    9. Diana Prince as Wonder Woman’s secret identity. Maybe I am just closed-minded stubborn fearful of change a traditionalist, but I never really understood why they dumped the Diana-Prince angle in favor of making her an Ambassador. The ending of this book, though, suggests that perhaps Wonder Woman will again reclaim her dual-identity.

    8. As a gay man and a historian, I am predetermined to love homages to the past. It is my destiny. So you can imagine the squeals of delight that this book created with the ultimate homage of Diana Prince wearing a white jumpsuit in honor of the misguided “Emma Peel” years of Wonder Woman.

    7. The return of the Diana Prince bun. Oh, yeah, we love a powerful woman with a bun of steel, much like first-season Kathryn Janeway.



    6. Wonder Girl gets beat up – a lot. Okay, see, here is the deal with that: I just never liked Wonder Girl. I didn’t like her when Wonder Girl was supposed to be Diana, just younger. I didn’t like her when she became a separate individual as Diana’s adoptive sister. I didn’t like her when she was part of the Teen Titans. I didn’t like her when Debra Winger played her on the t.v. show (who couldn’t master the spin to save her life!).

    I didn’t follow or care about Wonder Girl’s really bizarre death/rebirth/alternate universe story as Donna Troy. Now I am told there is some new Wonder Girl. Chrissy? Kelly? Cassandra? Whatever.

    Much like I didn’t mind seeing Robin die (who everybody thought was Dick Grayson, but was really Jason Todd, but that is another entry entirely), I would be more than happy to see Wonder Girl expunged from the DC universe. Is it any mystery that Diana didn’t bother telling Donna where she spent the past year?

    5. The comic referred to the Amazon home by both Themyscira and Paradise Island.

    4. Oh, how I loved to see classic Wonder Woman characters back in print. Cheetah? Present. Dr. Psycho? Present (I thought he was dead. Fellow comic-book nerds? Help me out here). Giganta? Present. Steve Trevor? Present (well, kind of).

    3. Even though I don’t care for that skank Wonder Girl (see #6), I liked that she used her earring as a weapon. Now that’s the spirit of Wonder Woman! All of her fashion accessories always served multiple purposes.



    2. References/side jokes to just how useless Steve Trevor always turned out in any mission, ever.

    1. The comic is about Wonder Woman. Really, we don’t need more, do we?

Now, though, we must deal with my gravitas. Yes, I am optimistic, but I have fears:

    8. Themyscira is still gone (again). We can’t have Wonder Woman without Paradise Island.

    7. This comic did not include nearly enough boomerang-tiara action.

    6. That skank Wonder Girl says that the magic lasso only compels people to tell the truth. This is in direct violation of the Marston Wonder Woman. Come on people, the lasso compels people to obey any order, including telling the truth. The first season of the t.v. show reduced the lasso to just truth-telling to keep Wonder Woman from being too powerful (but CBS thought better of that idea when they brought the show to the modern era).



    5. What if Diana does not return as Wonder Woman and we are stuck with that skank Donna Troy, whom we all hate? Allan Heinberg has claimed that Donna will be Wonder Woman for at least five issues. This is not good. We don't like anybody being Wonder Woman except Diana, least of all that skank Donna Troy.

    4. Okay, Diana’s breasts were the size of watermelons – again. I understand this to be part of the Dodson style. I know also that she runs around in a modified Playboy bunny costume. Still, do her breasts need to be inhumanly large? Really?

    3. Not much actually happened in this comic. I mean the art looked great. I loved Diana Prince and her white jumpsuit in the end shot. We didn’t really get much of a story, though.

    2. I want to believe, but how can Wonder Woman develop a secret identity as Diana Prince when the whole world knew her as Wonder Woman, the Ambassador of Themyscira?

    1. DC has constantly found ways to screw up Wonder Woman for the past twenty+ years.


Alright, kiddies, you know that I am ready for the next issue. My fears aside, I have hope for the new Wonder Woman.

If you have not yet bought your copy of Wonder Woman #1, get to your local comic book store now. What the hell is wrong with you?

Monday, June 19, 2006

It's Really About the Queers

Warner-Brothers executives sweated bullets thinking that audiences will imagine the upcoming Superman movie as “gay.” Under pressure, openly-gay director Bryan Singer publicly disavowed any queer tendencies in his Man of Steel. Superman, Singer stated, “is probably the most heterosexual character in any movie I've ever made.” Um, gee, thanks Bryan. Rather than taking the moment to point out the homophobia that makes such a statement necessary or challenging assumptions about the gay/straight dichotomy, it’s good to see you are striking a blow for heterosexuals everywhere.

Phobias around Superman’s questionable sexuality suggests that queers simply aren’t welcome as dominate figures in the mainstream media. We might be visible in a film about HIV/AIDS, musical theater, or the quirky hijinks of a straight woman pal – You know, films about “our issues.” Should, though, the topic be centered on national security, war, or even old fashioned super-heroics, queers need not apply. Unless discussing the best way to redecorate your living room, queer folk are best quarantined on some remote reservation for the criminally fabulous. Warner Brothers and Singer stopped just short of promising that Superman Returns promotes compulsory heterosexuality as the most natural and attractive of choices.

Of course, the funny bit in all of this is that the fervor around Superman suggests just how easily his character lends itself to queer interpretations. The overreaction and assertions of his exclusive woman-loving ways only brought into light the many ways that mild-mannered Clark Kent leads quite a queer existence (which Dorian has been having much fun pointing out in his blog).

I have never been a heterosexual man, but I don’t imagine that many of them opt for spandex and long flowing capes (even if we think they should). Superman’s muscles and allegedly titan package illicit the queer gaze. He lives a double life, hiding most of his activities from his perennial suffering girlfriend. The boy also has some serious daddy issues.

What’s missed in all of these discussions are the ways that queer folk have long been playing with the media and tweaking it to match our sensibilities. The reaction against having an openly gay director for Superman ignores the ways that queers have both produced (Singer hardly is the first gay director in Hollywood, kiddies) and/or reinterpreted existing images to meet our own needs.

Popular media icons like Superman invite queer readings. By queer I don’t just mean the modern identities of gay/lesbian (though those are critical to queering the media), but all types of subversive gender and sexual practices that challenge the dominant vision of heteronormativity. Examples? I might have a few:

Superman: 1950s Television Show

    Back in the day, a breakfast cereal sponsored the Superman television show. At this time, most advertisers expected the shows’ stars to push their product (talk about the ultimate product placement!). The network, however, deemed it inappropriate to show Clark Kent eating breakfast with Lois Lane lest the audience think that they had spent the previous night in a carnal embrace. The solution? Clark happily served his morning flakes to Jimmy Olsen. Lois, the old spinster, apparently wept bitter tears as she ate cold cereal alone in her apartment.



    The network never imagined that the audience might ask, “Just how did Jimmy end up at Clark’s apartment for such an early morning snack?” Now, I am not saying for sure that Jimmy rode Superman like a sweaty bullet train the previous night, but can you say for sure that he didn’t?


The Golden Girls

    Few people can dispute the massive gay male following of this 1980s sitcom. Now that it runs ad nauseam on Lifetime Network, an entirely new generation of gay men have adopted it.

    The premise of the show, in case you have spent the past twenty years in an isolated jungle tending to the poor, centered on four older women living in one house. Most of their day’s activities involved sitting around eating cheesecake and discussing their sex lives. In took little time for a group of New York drag queens to do the obvious by adopting the scripts and bring their own version of the show to the stage.



    What made the show queer? Well, for starters, gay men served as many of the show’s writers. Moreover, the four women rejected conventional assumptions about sex, aging, and friendship. They did not exist as parts of permanent heterosexual couples. Rather, they all dated often. Blanche, especially, defended the positive experience of having sex with somebody for no other reason than being physically attracted to each other.

    The Golden Girls’ living situation also suggested some type of Geritol based commune. On more than one occasion, the four women referred to each other as “family,” even irking their biological relatives by doing so.

Ken [Formerly of Barbie and Ken]

    Mattel monitors the image of their flagship toy, Barbie, more viciously than the Department of Homeland Security wiretaps U.S. citizens’ phones. You can imagine their trauma when everyone from Dan Savage to People magazine asked “Has Ken Come Out?” in 1993. In that year, Mattel launched a new version of Barbie’s boyfriend. In this incarnation, known as Earring Magic Ken, the doll came with streaked hair, an earring, black hip-hugger jeans, a mesh shirt, and a lavender vest. To complete his look, Ken tossed on (what appeared to most awake observers as) a cockring dangling from his necklace.



    Mattel quickly disavowed any queer reading of Ken. Gay men, in contrast, flocked to the stores to snap up the doll.

    Mattel’s media relations director declared any queering of Ken was “outrageous” when cultural studies professor Ann DuCille interviewed her the following year. Mattel further explained away Ken’s cock ring as “adults putting their perceptions on something intended for children.” The problem being, of course, that children did not design Earring Magic Ken.

    Many have speculated that this Ken emerged as a subversion from within Mattel’s corporate hive-mind. Given the money invested in Barbie, it’s hard to believe that nobody at Mattel mentioned that the new Ken seemed, well, kinda gay. I, for one, would find it hard to believe that gay men aren’t behind-the-scenes in at least part of Barbie’s production. It would be easy to imagine them having a good laugh launching the new doll with sex paraphanalia. Then again, as DuCille points out, perhaps there is something more interesting at play if Mattel attempted to make Ken “hip” and “cool” and ended up with “gay.”

    Really, though, Ken had shown his queer inclinations long before he started wearing sex toys as an accessory. Let’s face it, he spent an awfully long time dating Barbie without ever pushing her to get married. Some might attribute this to Ken’s horrific Hemingway crotch (which draws into question the practicality of his cock ring). I think, though, Ken liked the boys. He gladly went shopping with Barbie and wore almost as much pink as she did. Barbie recently dumped Ken, perhaps finally acknowledging the truth to herself.

    Remember, Ken, better latent than never.

Bewitched

    We can read the entire witch world as decidedly queer in this sitcom. Of course, we all remember our discussion of Uncle Arthur (GayProf will include that post on your midterm exam). Queerness in Bewitched, though, didn’t just imply same-sex desire through Arthur’s flaming personality. Rather, all of the witches expressly rejected the conformity of domestic, monogamous, heterosexual marriage.



    The producers of the t.v. show continuously implied that witches’ long term relationships were more open than heterosexual mortal marriages. Endora and Maurice clearly had a non-monogamous relationship as they both frequently mentioned being out about the galaxy with others. Somewhat later in the show, Samantha had to create massive layers of explanation and apologies for her identical cousin, Sarina, participating in a love-in.

    The witches flaunted domestic conventions and named Samantha a traitor for giving into Darrin’s demands to live in suburbia. All of the witches and warlocks showed indifference to winning Darrin or anybody’s else approval for the way they lived their lives. On almost every show, one of Samantha’s relatives declared her home a prison or, if in a more polite mood, a drudge.

    Of course, the show did not intend to celebrate the witches’ nonconformity. Instead, it used them to illustrate Samantha and Darrin’s wedded bliss. The witches’ world suggested the possibility of queer lives and sexual freedom, but it came as a mixed message. They were, after all, witches.

    This type of freedom seemed much like the queer readings of the X-Men movies (coincidentally (wink-wink), Bryan Sanger directed the first two). In that case, queer folk got the uncomfortable label of “mutants.” These types of images gave us freedom and power, but also presented the dangers of sexuality run amok. Queerness in these forms existed only on the fringe of society, among a group of secret outcasts.


Mr. Belevedere

    Almost sixty years before the Queer Eye guys appeared on the scene, Mr. Belvedere showed boring, monotonous straight people that they could improve their lives by adding a bit of queerness (Yes, Belvedere’s first film incarnation, Sitting Pretty (1948), inspired the uninspired television show of the 1980s).

    In the Belvedere films, the obviously gay epicene Clifton Webb portrayed a self-proclaimed genius who spoke openly about his hatred of suburbia and the devotion to family. Webb’s Belvedere suffered no fools and did not find anything admirable in domesticity or traditional gender roles. He disliked bratty children and disdained their permissive hetero parents even more.



    Within minutes of answering an advertisement for a live-in nanny position, Belvedere showed himself to be fussy, condescending, and theatrical. Why should it come as a surprise that Maureen O’Hara hired him on-the-spot?

    Belvedere’s idiosyncratic approach to life quickly made the household run better. Either oblivious or unconcerned, Belvedere never responded to the gossip that quickly spread about a man doing “women’s work” as a nanny. Instead, he showed the family, and ultimately the entire town, just how much better off they are to have a gay man confirmed bachelor in their presence.

    Mr. Belevdere exists as the protype for the gay Mammy figure. He never fell short of quick wit or a bitchy comment. In a formula that would become a constant in the second-half of the twentieth century, Belevedere’s queer sexuality and gender would be tolerated as long as it served the needs of the heterosexual family. Moreover, the most we knew of his own sexual interests came only in being told that he “never married [a woman].”


All of these types of queer images, of course, kept queer sexuality under wraps. Mr. Belevedere put his libido on the back burner while he helped the really important people in society, the child-producing heterosexuals.

At the same time, though, these types of queer images also allowed young queer folk opportunities to fantaize. They allowed us to dream about creating a life that did not focus on newly-built suburban houses and whiny children clinging to our pants. After all, Mr. Belvedere left suburbia and his needy heteros behind once he became a famous author (writing a book, incidently, that mocked the hetero hyprocrisy that surrounded him).



These types of queer images offered an opportunity to see individuals who rejected monogamous heterosexual marriage and got to have fun. Neither Belvedere nor Blanche took the judgements of those around them seriously.

None of these characters or scenarios offered direct validation of same-sex desire. Queer images like these, though, offered an escape from the doldrums of traditional hetero marriage and the masochism of trying to be something we were not. We are constantly drawn to these types of images because they hint, if only coyly, at sexual liberation.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

I'll Be Gone

Summer passes quickly when you prostitute yourself eagerly teach summer school. My classroom duties aside, I have started thinking about my big move to Boston. Oh, let’s be honest. In my mind, I left Texas six weeks ago. My body just happens to be doing all the packing at the moment.

Come August, I can say goodbye to the Lone Star State for at least a year. The goddess has granted me a respite, but I hope she will consider finding me something permanent elsewhere (and by elsewhere, I mean better than Texas – No zombie-monkey-paw wish fulfilments that move me to Mississippi or Arkansas).

Regardless of the cosmos’ plans, I think it is healthy to take stock in what I will miss and won’t miss from Texas. Like that cable news network, GayProf believes in being fair and balanced:


    What I will Miss: My friends here. Many people have been truly kind an nice to me the past four years. I appreciate that.

    What I won’t Miss: Colleagues who discuss little flags on maps; their attempts to eliminate the department’s non-discrimination clause; and any mention of my progress towards tenure.

    ***

    What I Will Miss: Blue Bell Ice Cream – Damn, that’s pretty good. As a side note, I will also miss HEB’s (a Texas supermarket chain) Mango Ice Cream. Actually, I will generally miss HEB and its insane grocery-supplying goodness.

    What I Won’t Miss: The fight at the gym to work off all that ice cream and grocery goodness.

    ***

    What I Will Miss: Being in a state that borders Mexico.

    What I Won’t Miss: Being in a state where the majority of Euro Americans refuse to consider Mexicans, Native Americans, or African Americans’ human rights.

    ***

    What I Will Miss: Hearing that cute, sexy accent from a hunky gay Texan.

    What I Won’t Miss: Hearing that shrill, grating accent from a backwater hetero Baptist Texan.

    ***

    What I Will Miss: My kick-ass office. Yeah, I have a sweet corner-deal on the top floor of my building. The History Department also resides in an older building, so there are giant windows.

    What I Won’t Miss: The roach infestation that has taken over that older building. This morning, I found four dead cockroaches (each a minimum two inches long) and two living cockroaches.

    ***

    What I Will Miss: Paying insanely small amounts for tons of living space.

    What I Won’t Miss: Being trapped in pre-fab 1970s apartment hell.

    ***

    What I Will Miss: The feeling of community among lefty folk who are under siege in this god-forsaken state (Yes, God actually forsook it.)

    What I Won’t Miss: Gerrymandering.

    ***

    What I Will Miss: Willie Nelson and his pot-smoking ways.



    What I Won't Miss: Rick Perry and his evil homophobic ways.

    ***

    What I Will Miss: Living in a town where I can drive anywhere in under ten minutes and encounter almost no traffic.

    What I Won’t Miss: Driving period.

    ***

    What I Will Miss: Earnest students.

    What I Won’t Miss: Hateful, right-wing students.

    ***

    What I Will Miss: Never having to scrap ice from windshields (though Boston’s public transportation will likely make this moot anyway).

    What I Won’t Miss: The blazing intolerable heat that lasts from April until November. I can’t totally confirm this, but I think my fingernails actually started to melt today.

    ***

    What I will Miss: Spring wild-flowers in Texas, including Blue Bells. They are really spectacular as you drive along the highways. In the early Spring this year, I made a couple of trips to Houston and was reminded that Spring (the single month that we get of it) is the best time to be in Texas.



    What I Won’t Miss: The blazing intolerable heat that lasts from April until November. Yeah, I hate it so much, I listed it twice.

    ***

    What I Will Miss: Being part of a university community.

    What I Won’t Miss: Being in a town with only two movie theaters, both showing Over the Hedge on fourteen screens.

    ***

    What I Will Miss: Being able to excuse my heavy consumption of deep-fried foods as “sampling the local cuisine.”

    What I Won’t Miss: The local cuisine.

    ***

    What I Will Miss: Having almost year-round optimal picture-taking conditions outside.

    What I Won’t Miss: Having almost nothing that I want to photograph.

    ***

    What I Will Miss: Watching semi-naked and buff joggers prancing about all year.

    What I Won’t Miss: Giant, aluminum churches that can seat over 5,000 conservative Christians in one go.

    ***

    What I Will Miss: Having an airport where you can clear security five minutes before your flight departs.

    What I Won’t Miss: Living in a state where it took a civil war to end slavery.

    ***
    What I Will Miss: Living in a state that borders the Great State of New Mexico (the Land of Enchantment, don’t you know?).



    What I Won’t Miss: Living in a state with suck-ass “Tex-Mex” Mexican food. Ugh, the suck haunts me already (The exception to this is the Mexican food served in the Rio Grande Valley, which is excellent (especially the mole dishes)).

    ***

    What I Will Miss: Almost never having to wait in line, ever.

    What I Won’t Miss: Seeing Margaritas dispensed from a Slurpee machine (a crime against tequila and good bartending everywhere, IMHO).

    ***

    What I Will Miss: The LBJ Presidential Library.

    What I Won’t Miss: The George Bush (41) Presidential Library.

    ***

    What I Will Miss: Having so much to complain about and such easy targets for my blog.

    What I Won’t Miss: Living in Texas.



Yeah, I tried to make this post suggest that I am going to miss things about Texas. Mostly I want people to think that I am a reasonable person and can see the good in everything. Really, though, I am not going to miss much about red, red Texas while I am in blue, blue Boston.

Perhaps, though, my gravitas will seem more appealing in cartoon form. A loyal reader (known only to me as Rat) thoughtfully created this rendering of me. Should you want to ask: Yes, I do wear that tiara while I am vacuuming:

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Getting Out from the Violence

Two different incidents reminded me of queer folk’s continued vulnerability in the U.S. First, Gayest Neil wrote an honest blog entry about the ways that the current political climate impacts even our seemingly simply decisions, like filling out a travel form. Second, the evil beating of drag-performance-artist Kevin Aviance on Saturday in New York’s East Village showed the chilling reality of violence. Even in an allegedly liberal Mecca, queers are not safe.

According to reports, a gang of men brutally battered Aviance while shouting homophobic slurs. Passers-by did nothing to assist him. Alone, bloody, and with a shattered jaw, he walked several blocks until he reached a hospital.

Queer folk have reached a point where we can usually live fairly okay lives in the United States without tremendous fear. One can almost become insulated by living in prominent gay neighborhoods. The beating of Aviance reminds us, however, that our sense of safety is largely an illusion.

Queer folk will always be a minority of the population. As a result, we live under rules, customs, and laws created by people other than ourselves. Many of these laws and customs continue to name our difference as inferior. Though some change has occurred in the last thirty years, being called “gay” still ranks as one of the most threatening insults on school grounds today. Because we are deemed inferior, we are open to political, verbal, and physical attacks.

Much of the violence occurs because we are still unknown to the majority population. We have been raised by a popular media that presents only the thinnest glimpses about us. Setting aside that most representations of queer folk tend to be negative (murderous bisexual vampires still being a favorite), even the allegedly positive images present a distorted vision of queer life.

For the most part, the media’s positive films about queer folk usually focuses on an idealized “coming out” story. When I was a wee-queer-lad, I remember watching the typically cheery coming-out stories. In these instances, usually a young queer person finds another young queer person. They fall in love. They then face initial familial and/or social rejection, but triumph over adversity, and live happily ever after.

In reality, though, we know that coming to terms with our sexuality starts long before we willingly experiment with our first sexual experience. Nothing occurs in the real world until we have worked it out (at least partially) in our own minds first.

Most real-life coming-out struggles don’t make compelling cinema because they happen internally. We have to battle all of our childhood messages and demons about same-sex sex before we can even think about entering the terrain of external sexual exploration. Sex and love, in many ways, happens late in the process.

Despite the promise of happily ever after, every queer person also knows that “coming out” never ends. Each new person who enters our lives and every new situation presents whole new opportunities to spring forth from the closet.



We probably don’t think much about the constant assessments we make everyday about our sexuality and the public. In thousands of ways, we have become masters of assessing our surroundings and trying to decide when we are safe and when we are in danger. It’s such second-nature to most us, we aren’t even aware of it.

We, as a queer people, can't even come to consensus about what the best level of “outness” should be. Indeed, I constantly fought with the liar ex (who told many lies) from the very start of our relationship about this issue. I should have known from these fights that he simply lacked personal courage. Only after others did the hard work for him did he ever step-up. Then he almost always asked to be celebrated for finally being out.

My bitterness about liar ex (who told many lies) aside, we have all made tough decisions like Gayest Neil at one point or another. I liked his entry because he talked candidly about how outside pressures can seep into even the strongest of queer wills.

Despite my claims of moral-superiority over liar ex (who told many lies), I also fail to live up to the ideal standards of outness that I create. It took me much longer, for instance, to tell my extended family than it should have.

At other times, I get lazy. As an example, I often purchase flowers for my desk in my never-ending quest to be more like Mary Richards. On the last occasion, as I paid for the flowers, the clerk commented, “Gee, your wife must be happy with all the flowers you buy.” Being in a hurry (or lazy (or just not in the mood)), I didn’t take the time to correct her that a) the flowers were for gay me and b) that gay me did not have a wife (or a husband – just a liar ex (who told many lies)).



For political reasons, though, I should have made the time to do so. Certainly I didn’t fear that the flower clerk had a shotgun behind the counter waiting to blow away flower-buying-queer-boys (Then again, I do live in Texas). It would have been an opportunity to remind her that a greater diversity exists in the world. By being vocal and vigilant about our experiences, our fears, and our triumphs, we can show straight folk that we don’t wish either their pity or their contempt.

Being queer in the U.S. is dangerous. We are still at risk and those fears haunt our thinking in a thousand ways. Young queer folk are still not able to develop unencumbered by religious and social pressures that name us inferior and defective. Some of us turn to self-destructive behavior (like the bottle, or the needle, or tina) to seek escape. Others turn inward, never walking in the sun. Some even turn against their queer brothers and sisters. They can’t control their outside circumstances, so they use violence or mind-games to make themselves feel powerful in their personal relationships.

We need to ignore the criticisms launched at queer folk who become “too visible.” Some attempt to dismiss them as “wearing our sexuality on our sleeve.” Yet, most straight folk rarely realize how often they pronounce their sexual preference without even thinking twice about it. Everything from casual mentions of their opposite-sex spouse to their high-school prom experiences lets the world know their bedroom habits.

Queer folk, though, must also learn to acknowledge how our surrounding homophobic society influences us. Holding ourselves or our ideals to rigid boundaries and measures of outness will lead us to more heartache. We can only start to form a realistic political strategy when we start to embrace both the good and the ugly that informs our sexuality and our identities. None of us will ever succeed in being totally without fear.

Interrogating our daily decisions about how we present ourselves and respond to the world, though, will build our consciousness. This new consiousness will make us more engaged with the struggles that we all face in pursuing our sexual happiness.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Queer Demands

So the Senate voted against amending the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Both the conservatives and the left are claiming victory. Nobody really expected the measure to pass, but Bush and company successfully got the press to focus on other things than their complete incompetence. Queer Rights groups are also claiming a victory for having the measure fail. We all, though, lost in this recent round.

Don’t get me wrong. Obviously I am glad that groups like Human Rights Campaign are around fighting against these measures. Like a good, responsible citizen, I also took the five minutes out of my day to phone my senators’ offices directly (as I always do when important issues come up – I never understood people who wouldn’t even do that most minimum of efforts).

Queer folk constantly being on the defensive-end of politics, however, leaves me frustrated. Whenever the Religious Right attempts one of these nasty moves, we are asked to celebrate that we haven’t been forced into a concentration camp. Yea, us. That’s great – we get to live for another day.

Few people stopped to question the implications of the Religious Right’s justification for banning same-sex marriage. The language they used, though, suggests why this fight is about more than just Joe and Jim filing a joint 1040 form. The Religious Right sneaked in a discussion that enforces traditional gender roles that few people noticed. They don’t want same-sex marriage because they envision that it threatens “traditional marriage” that kept women chained to the stove.

Whatever the case, I think it is time for queer folk to stop playing defensively and start demanding things from an indifferent government. Queers with more ambition are what I want to see.

Here is a list of things that I think the government should provide us, as a people:



    1. Equivalent government funding for AIDS research as it provides for military research. It seems only fair to me that every dollar spent thinking about ways to murder people should be matched by money spent trying to save human lives.

    2. An amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and an amendment banning discrimination based on gender identification.

    3. Because of the difficulty in coming to terms with one’s sexuality in a homophobic society, the government should provide $5,000 cash for each young person who successfully comes out of the closet and another $5,000 U.S. savings bond. Plus the government should give that young person their choice of an all expense-paid night at either their favorite gay disco or their favorite lesbian soft-ball game.

    4. Monetary compensation for all military personnel (or their survivors) who have been dismissed because of their sexual orientation.

    5. $500 million to subsidize the creation of major queer centers in San Francisco, Chicago, Santa Fe, New York, Atlanta, and Boston.

    6. Eliminating the picture of Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill and replacing him with an image of Wonder Woman.



    7. Declaring June 10 a national holiday, but only for queer people. Yeah, that’s right, the government will pay us our regular salary on that holiday. All Conservative Christian heteros in the country, conversely, will be required to spend four hours of community service cleaning queer people’s homes and/or doing their yard work. This will be Conservative Christians' punishment for making our lives hell. At the end of the day, a queer person gets to ask said Conservative Christian hetero, “So, where’s your God now?”

    8. Because queer folk often faced horrific scientific experiments in the past, all queer folk should be guaranteed free access to medical care for the rest of their lives.

    9. Government money to create an independent publishing house that will print queer-oriented materials at cost.

    10. Government money to create a free queer-oriented television station equivalent to PBS (only less boring). We can even get the folk from Avenue Q to create their version of Sesame Street. Of course, it goes without saying, Bert and Ernie would be forever transferred to this new network after they finally declare their love for each other.



    11. Any leader of an ex-gay group that has a member commit suicide should be prosecuted for murder by the federal government.

    12. Because queer folk often faced harassment and bulling through their public school years, the government should provide a free-ride at any institution of higher learning they want to attend. That should include bartending schools as well.

    13. Establish a major statue of a queer hero on the Capitol grounds. We can decide who this queer hero would be later (though I think that GayProf would look quite fetching in bronze. I am just sayin’).

    14. Require unisex restrooms in all public buildings.

    15. Free parking for queer folk. Why should queer folk pay for parking in urban areas? Our queer dollars often kept those urban areas afloat. The government can get the money for this parking subsidy by taxing the shit out of gas-guzzling SUV’s and Ford F-150's.

    16. Government-sponsored seminars for better same-sex sex (preferably with optional hands-on training) and a government-run queer dating service. Since our sex lives have been vilified for centuries, it seems only fair that the government do something to make sure we enjoy them to our full possibility now.

    17. Monthly deliveries of free condoms and lube from the government for all single and/or non-monogamous queer men.

    18. Monthly deliveries of free massage oil and herbal tea from the government for all single and/or non-monogamous lesbians.

    19. The red stripes in the U.S. flag should be replaced with a light magenta color.

    20. Tax credits for queer folk who live in isolated towns in the U.S. South so that they can pay for access to same-sex porn. Same-sex porn, after all, is part of our cultural heritage.

    21. Government subsidies for drag queens learning their craft. That’s right, I think the U.S. government should pay 30 percent of a drag queen's wages until she can make it on her own. It takes time to develop wit, after all.

    22. A special government-run cell phone service that will keep all queer folk connected at all times.

    23. Free training for community organization, photography, and film making.

    24. Replace the slogan “In God We Trust” with “In Sappho We Trust.”

    25. Queer history will be taught as part of U.S. history in all public schools.



    26. A federal museum honoring queer innovations (I envision one wing shaped like a giant phallus, the other wing shaped like a giant vulva).

    27. Rename the state of Oregon “Queerlandia;” rename Portland “Gaysville;” and rename Salem "Lesbos."

    28. TaB should be the Federally Recognized Queer Soft Drink of America and be free to all queer folk.

    29. An apology from the U.S. Supreme Court for wrongly intervening in the 2000 election and wrongfully installing George W. Bush as president (This isn’t just a queer issue, but while I am making a list...).

    30. Because studies suggest that queer folk lead more stressful lives than their hetero counterparts, I think the government should build several resort destinations just for queer folk. Man, I feel a little tense right now – I think I should have a free trip to The Mountain Queer Resort in Utah for a little R&R.


Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Just a Little Off the Top

There are many things to write from the past few days. I could discuss the trivial: Like my disappointment with X-Men III (I can still taste the suck). Or I could discuss the chilling: Like the anniversary of AIDS and the fact that we have a government just as indifferent as we did 25 years ago. Or I could talk about the evil: Like Bush’s attempt to turn loving couples into a threat to national security and good, clean heteros everywhere. These things all have their due.

Instead, though, sometimes it’s good to think about less lofty issues. Even I can get tired of the gravitas. We all know that GayProf has a tendency to over think things sometimes. “No, GayProf,” I hear you saying, “You are just an introspective guy. We await your ascent into the heavens where you will be seated at the right hand of our goddess. We believe in the one and true GayProf.” Okay, maybe you don’t say that last bit – except on holy days.

Let's think about a less serious issue that still occupies gay men’s thoughts quite often in the U.S. This is not a major issue. Actually, I think it’s such a minor issue that I am surprised that it gets so much attention. I just don’t quite get some gay men's quasi-obsession over circumcised verses uncircumcised.

Having lost my foreskin long before the soft spot on my head closed up, I can’t really talk about the benefits or drawbacks of being uncut first-hand. Of course, being a historian and all, I can mention that one of the reasons that medical doctors promoted circumcision in the 20th-century U.S. was because having foreskin makes it much easier to masturbate. Bastards.

I remember distinctly the first time that I saw an uncircumsied penis. It was my best friend from second grade and I marveled at the difference. Still, then (as now) I was just happy to see a penis of any type and didn’t really put too much effort in cataloging the differences.

In my limited adult experience, I have had some valuable hands-on time as a participant-observer with both of these two options. Both the hard-top and convertible penis seem like they each have equal pluses and minuses.



Maybe I am just indiscriminate desperate slutty open-minded, but my concerns with a potential partner’s penis are pretty minimal. Basically, all that I am looking for is a cock that can have an erection and toss a load without heroic efforts. What? Hey – The Center of Gravitas ain’t a blog for children. Go somewhere else of merry-go-rounds and bumper-cars.

Yet, many gay personal ads out there state explicit requirements for one option or another. Some gay personal sites even have a prearranged check box to indicate your foreskin’s current status. Are people really turning down random sex dating men based on this tiny distinction? Does having or not having foreskin make up for other attributes in your man? “Yeah,” one can imagine somebody saying, “My man is missing two fingers, hasn’t held a steady job since 1994, is hooked on tina, and likes two or three guys as well as me. What’s important, though, is that his cock is still in its original packaging.”

Again – I am not saying this desire for one or the other is wrong. Whatever gets you going is fine by me. If only foreskin will do it for you, that’s fare. Dock away.

If you just can’t handle the different taste of an uncut penis (and they do taste different), that’s cool with me as well. Whatever works for you. GayProf doesn’t judge -- on this issue.

I can understand having a preference for cut or uncut, but making it a deal breaker? Really? I prefer drinking TaB over Diet Coke, for instance. If Anderson Cooper offered me a Diet Coke in his bedroom, however, you better believe I am going to drink it.

Unlike gay men, you rarely hear straight women express a firm-line stance on this issue. If questioned, they might make their druthers known. Quite frankly, it seems that many straight women avoid having to look at a penis very much at all. They don’t want direct eye contact with that mess, from their perspective. Cut or uncut, therefore, is just not on the top of their list.

What does seem to be on the top of straight women’s lists? The guy needs to be taller than them. It’s true. Sorry hetero guys, if you are short, you just aren’t making the list. A straight guy could be toady-ugly, but if he is over six-foot, straight women will consider him a bonus-find because they could wear heels. I'll leave it to the hets to debate the pros and cons of this issue. I am just observing.

Some gay men, though, seem to spend a great deal of energy thinking about the foreskin/non-foreskin issue. There are entire sex parties devoted to only uncircumsied guys (no cutsies allowed). I guess I just don’t like the idea of excluding people. Everybody wants to be invited to the party.

I have also met many gay men who bemoan their cut status. An entire minor industry exists of products that try to “regrow” one’s foreskin. Most of these contraptions seem to involve stretching the skin on the shaft of the penis (!). This sounds both painful and incoveinent. Does it really matter that much? Really?

Until 1980, almost 70 percent of male infants had their foreskin removed at birth in the U.S. for non-religious reasons. Even today, when circumcision has started to lose favor, over half of infants still have the procedure. It seems like these men just need to get over it. Your foreskin is gone. It's not coming back to you. Let it go.



It’s not just gay guys, though, who have some psychological issues over the turtle-neck. As much as many gay men eroticize foreskin, some straight guys seem to fear it (even those who are uncircumscised themselves). You often hear straight fathers talking about their reasons for having their sons trimmed up. They usually offer, “I want him to look like all the other boys in the locker room.” What exactly was going on in these men’s teenaged locker rooms? And why wasn’t I ever asked to join in on the compare and contrast moment when I was young?

I once had a straight-male acquaintance from Europe who spent part of his young life in the states. He actually was embarrassed by his foreskin even as an adult. When questioned directly about still having a flip-cap, he disavowed it. He only used the stalls in men’s rooms. Now, I never really asked what happened in his youth (we just weren’t that tight), but, damn, there was a man who didn’t want his penis to be different from the others around him.

It all reminds me that men are not as secure in our bodies as we are lead to believe. During the height of the feminist movement, women spent some serious time discussing their bodies and coming to self-acceptance in a conscious way. I wonder if men (both queer and non-queer) wouldn’t benefit from similar introspection. More than just contemplating if we have enough precious inches, we could use some greater security in using what we got. I am not saying that I am going to draft a new play entitled the Penis Monologues (Although...). Still, let’s work it out boys. We have what we have – Be happy.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Blogger Thwarts GayProf

Blogger doesn’t want to upload any images from me. We can’t have a post without a Wonder Woman comic, now can we?

So, until Blogger starts functioning again (and it has not been working for days now), watch this video sent to me by a loyal reader. Somehow, it just makes me feel better.