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(05/06/15 7:15pm)
Thursday through Saturday there’s going to be a performance of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner in the Hepburn Zoo. It’s a very famous play that focuses around the lives of several characters during the HIV/AIDS Crisis in New York City, one of the turning points in American gay history, as well as other themes like accepting your sexuality, racism, queerness and faith.
The play isn’t unique in its theme. The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer is also based on the rise of HIV/AIDS in New York City during the 80s. During this time, HIV was an unknown and unnamed disease largely affecting gay men. On the account that gay men can’t impregnate each other and the different attitudes of the time on safer sex practices, it was an unfortunate series of cause and effect that lead to such detriment particular to the gay community. But this was a particularly pivotal moment in gay history packed with social issues that sets it apart from many other epidemics that have faced humanity.
Because of its effect on homosexual men, it reinforced the idea that being gay, that having anal sex was wrong, and that being gay led to being sick. People called it “gay cancer,” and as the medical community became more aware of the disease it was referred to as GRID, Gay Related Immune Deficiency. Even as people who were not queer men were diagnosed with the disease, the stigma of HIV/AIDS being associated with gay men is something that still exists today. The Reagan administration was slow to address the pandemic and the gay community, having faced such homophobia, were not easily trusting of the publications relating to the disease, which themselves were not always the most informative. Many people died and the world was slow to care. So many people died that many older gay men refer to it as a time in which an entire generation was lost. Works like The Normal Heart and Angels in America strike up strong emotion in their audiences as they touch on the themes of fear, sadness, and hope, especially in the older members of the queer community.
But I did not grow up in these times. My sex education was not the best, but when I learned about condoms and STIs, I was taught it was an issue for everyone. I was not taught that it is a gay people thing; in fact, the majority of my sex education revolved around pregnancy. The language used around how sexually transmitted infections were transmitted was pretty much only discussed in terms of men giving STI’s to women. Aside from the fact that queer people are largely erased in our sex education, this is good in many ways. It is a signal of how slowly but surely we are removing the stigma of HIV being a gay man’s disease. Furthermore, sex education as a whole is improving with me having learned that even if you do have HIV/AIDS you are capable of living a normal life. We know it’s not contagious via shaking someone’s hand. We’ve learned a lot.
But in that transition we’ve had to a greater scientific understanding, we’re losing a piece of history, leaving a generational gap between my generation and that of my mother’s. I remember when I first came out to my mother, she told me how important it was to not get HIV. While it was refreshing to not hear her warning me about getting a girl pregnant (turns out she really had no idea I was gay), I remember being offended in a way. I remember telling her that HIV is not particular to gay men and that HIV isn’t the only disease to worry about. It was the most passionate I’ve ever felt about the misconceptions surrounding HIV. And even then, the fervor I felt then is nothing compared to that of someone who lived during the times or knew the people who died. It was a time when gay men were fighting to live and fighting for the voice to be addressed on every level from the personal to the political. And in light of the upcoming show, I think it’s important to think about the issues being art so that we don’t forget what has happened, in addition to enjoying the show.
(04/22/15 10:46pm)
The gay best friend is not a new invention. It’s been a running bit on several sitcoms already, an excess of articles written about how to find one. There’s even been a movie on it, appropriately named GBF. Whether it’s middle school or college, female-identifying people everywhere can be found walking next to their gay best friends. And why wouldn’t they? They’re like the coolest thing ever. We’re cute, artistic, good dancers. It shows you’re not homophobic to have a gay friend. It’s so refreshing to have a guy friend who won’t hit on you. The list is endless.
But what does it actually mean to be someone’s gay best friend? Growing up, it actually felt pretty nice to be sought after by so many girls at school. I didn’t really fit in with the boys at school, and I hung out more with their girlfriends than they did. It was a sort of social status that was good in a peculiar way that let me deal with what was otherwise an undesirable situation: being gay.
The thing is, being someone’s gay best friend isn’t just being someone’s best friend who is gay. There are certain conventions that exist within the role. Engage in girl talk. Give your gal-pal sex tips for her man. Go bra shopping with her. Paint her nails. Kiss her so you can laugh about how non-sexual that was. Help her pick a cute accessory, et cetera.
But I didn’t know how to paint nails, I don’t like kissing girls and bra shopping has always sounded unappealing. And while not every friend expected me to do these things, and others were accepting of it when I didn’t want to or know how to do one of my duties, it’s happened to me several times that I’m told, “What kind of gay person are you?”
It was an ugly thing to hear, but for the most part, I was a great gay friend. I’ve always identified a lot with what gay pop-culture is and in many ways, wanted to be that friend. However, in many ways I’m not, with big aspects of myself not fitting what is the stereotypical gay identity. I’m nerdy. I love to play Pokémon. If we go shopping, I’d rather pick clothes for myself rather than you. And I can’t even twerk, although I admit I try. And for other people who don’t identify with what gay pop-culture is at all, the feeling of “not being gay enough” can quickly become a disassociation or resentment of the queer community and their own queer identities.
Even those of us who do fit the role fairly well aren’t necessarily satisfied with how things are. Gay people are people. We aren’t Chihuahuas that you can stuff in a purse to look cute and give you love. We’re fully functional beings with our own desires and needs. (And while we’re on it, so are Chihuahuas).
It is understandable that gay people, especially openly gay people, aren’t always easily accessible, especially in so many high schools. Thus it makes sense for your gay friends to be friends with a unique perspective. Meanwhile, it’s not hard for us to find a straight-cisgender friend. They might be the only access you have to gay pop-culture, which is a rich culture with a history behind it, way bigger than its caricature we see in the media. You may want to learn more about that culture and experience it.
But the idea of a gay best friend implies that the social role of gay men is to be at a woman’s side. The idea of a friendship between a man and a woman only being possible through the man being gay supports the idea that men are sex-driven and incapable of emotion or amnesty. The idea of the gay best friend erases the value of other queer identities and limits the value of gay people to sassy, well-dressed accessories. It reinforces the idea that being gay is not the standard. We are not your best friends, we are your gay best friends. And it gives people a sense of failure when we are incapable of being the kind of friend you wanted, while your other friends don’t have a set of expectations. While it’s a great refreshment to see gay people be celebrated instead of shamed, as gay people become more visible it is important to not eroticize and commodify an identity and remember that all people are individuals and we are friends with those individuals, not a collective identity.
(03/12/15 12:14am)
In my junior year in high school, I used to believe that people who didn’t choose to come out to their friends and family were part of the problem. Their “being in the closet” was detrimental to the visibility of LGBT+ people in the world and, therefore, was slowing down the biggest challenge for all queer folk, marriage equality. I, too, used to believe that marriage equality was the most pressing gay issue. Making myself visible to the public and striving for marriage made me one of them. I was playing up to hetero-ideals of success in life and relationships. Now, I see how this desire to assimilate is presented in today’s politics and my personal dialogue about the importance of coming out.
Recently, the Obama administration formally supported nationwide gay marriage, and President Obama included gay Americans in his speech at 50th Anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Selma Alabama. He says, “We are the gay Americans whose blood ran on the streets of San Francisco and New York, just as blood ran down this bridge.” I cannot help but tear up. Our President was claiming my gay identity as both American and his. I found this part of his speech remarkable and daring. How would the American public respond? How could anyone possibly disagree?
Working under the model “the personal is political,” it would make sense why the concept of being out is such a public (read: straight) affair, when in reality “being in the closet” is a private (read: queer) affair. In order for there to be political progress, a population of people need to first identify as LGBT+. The little Harvey Milk in me wanted to believe that all struggles for the LGBTQ community would disappear if we were out and about and proud. But also I’ve begun to see violence in having people come out in order to gain these human rights because “out-ness” comes with privilege. Even though Obama’s speech made me want to stand up with him and own my American-ness and sexuality in the same sentence, I was exercising a type of privilege and putting myself into a box. I found myself becoming “normal” to the American public. Is that the point of marriage equality? To normalize queer folk?
A part of marriage equality is having queer people assimilate to heteronormative standards of relationships. There is no more room for sexual liberation at the center of queer life. Instead, marriage equality shows that we are just like them when, in fact, we aren’t. We should not be fighting for the very institutions that uphold heteronormative values against us. Marriage shouldn’t be the sacred center of equality for the LGBT community. We do not have to tone ourselves down. We do not have to get married in order to have meaningful relationships. We do not have to oppress ourselves for who we are.
This argument obviously becomes more complicated when presented with same-sex couples adopting children and hospital visiting rights, but I believe that those issues can be solved without marriage equality. Politics aren’t being changed in our favor; instead, we are becoming the exception to the rule, our rights and perspectives are still being marginalized as a whole. This obsession with coming out and claiming marital rights is contradictory to the diversity within the queer community. Queer people endure all types of job, education, medical and housing discrimination before they can even start to worry about marriage. Some can’t even come out without fearing for their lives.
These aspects of the queer community put in perspective how marriage equality and coming out are issues that are too caught up in marketing our identities to the public than catering to the actual people affected. So now I find no importance in coming out or marriage equality. There must be other ways in which we can educate the American public about us without perpetuating our own oppression. There must be other ways for our same-sex relationships to hold their importance on paper without assimilating to marriage.
(12/03/14 11:24pm)
If my sexuality and race were their own person, my sexuality would walk straight out of the room at the sight of my race and wait patiently outside. My sexuality would spectate through the window and wait for my race to leave. He would be present, but at a distance. Silenced, yet still breathing. It was not until I saw queer people of color at the forefront of the Ferguson Movement, a civil rights movement, that I felt more at peace with myself.
Shirts that read “Gay is the new Black” never made sense to me. It was as if the Gay Rights Movement prided itself in being the “new” oppressed. It made the Civil Rights Movement a thing of the past. It also helped people unite under the hopes that people would join the right side of history and rid themselves of the guilt of denying minorities their rights. “Gay is the new Black” didn’t allow for me to see my identities as a constant struggle. But for me, being a person of color and gay is a constant state of me, no matter how conflicting.
The Civil Rights Movement also deserves some heat for separating those identities since, quite ironically, many of the leaders looked down on and even prohibited gay leadership, thinking that it would distract from the messages of tolerance. For example, Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King Jr’s right hand man and an influential advisor to many civil rights leaders, was banned from the Civil Rights Movement after his arrest for committing a “homosexual” act in 1953. Some black leaders thought that his sexuality was a distraction from the movement. For a long time, the tension between my sexuality and race resembled that of Bayard Rustin.
So where is the Gay Rights Movement when the Civil Rights Movement that presumably ended comes back? I found it in the echoes of brown-faced queer protestors that bounced off the back of cardboard posters that read, “#BLACKLIVESMATTER #GAYBLACKLIVESMATTER #TRANSBLACKLIVESMATTER.” For once, the Ferguson protests urged my sexuality and race to figure out their insignificant differences and be present for each other. They learned not to see each other as opposing forces and instead found a way to manifest their love in embraces that at first seemed unmanageable and awkward.
The urgency of this movement leaves no room for discrimination. The black community has never been so united since the Civil Rights Movement and I am astounded by the progress within the movement. Growing up, I always felt like an outsider within my community because of my mannerisms and the way I spoke, but now I find my identity being affirmed within the movement.
The presence of strong women in the protests also makes the Ferguson movement unique. The stories of grieving mothers have lit up flames under the feet of young women around the world that worry for the lives of their future children. Everyone is afraid. The front pages of newspapers show women of color parading the streets refusing to give away their children to the horrors of police brutality. Little children parade the streets with tears running down their face as mothers hold on tightly to their hands in one hand and a poster board on the other. These images go against the stereotypical archetypes of the angry black woman that haunt the black community. We are no longer experiencing the “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” but the collective stories of an unheard people.
The Ferguson case made me realize that oppression and tolerance isn’t a fad. Oppression is something that affects people of all sorts: women, queers, blacks. And while the struggle is different for every group, we’ve all struggled. Seeing gay people protest the Ferguson case isn’t to direct the attention from racism to homophobia, but an example of how queer people understand oppression. I now understand that the various aspects of my identity don’t have to fight, but coexist in their empathy for one another as Americans learn how to become more and more tolerant with the other.
(11/06/14 1:13am)
Gender roles in theory have very strict bounds, especially in how one expresses their gender. Men wear pants, women skirts and dresses. Men have short hair while women wear long hair. However, in practice, gender exists as much more of a spectrum and contains many components that change as time progresses. In many ways, gender expression is much less strictly defined than it was before and has a sense of gender neutrality. Women now wear pants, and pants aren’t solely reserved for men anymore in the contemporary United States. However, there is still the distinction between tight pants, which are perceived as more feminine, and baggy pants, which are perceived as more masculine. Short hair isn’t restricted to men, but there are several general distinctions between male short hairstyles and female short hairstyles. And as many new labels are formed as society progresses and people begin to describe their gender in new ways, new expressions for such gender identities have come along as well.
Androgyny, also known as gender bending, is the mixture of feminine and masculine characteristics, often used to describe fashion or one’s outward expression of gender. Androgyny can be expressed in many different ways to various degrees: men wearing fishnets and heels with a button down shirt and a tie, women wearing suits and binding their breasts whilst wearing make up. Famous androgynous people include Boy George, British 80’s pop star, and Andreja Pejić, formerly Andrej the androgynous fashion model icon.
In these cases society responds very well to androgynous expression. These are two out of the many examples of how androgyny is taking off as fashionable and beautiful in 21st-century pop culture. The ethereal beauty that androgyny provides of being neither female nor male, but both, is not something new. In many cultures and faiths, angels, gods and other divine or mythical beings are portrayed as beautiful and androgynous to some degree.
However, there is a very large difference between how society responds to angels and models and how society responds to an androgynous person walking down the street. Typically people who have an androgynous expression of their gender are discriminated against in society. How this stigma applies to androgynous men, women and non-gender conforming people also varies.
In the patriarchal society we live in, the man is worshiped, but not just any man: it is the straight and tough, manly man. Despite being so important and regarded as a strong quality, masculinity is actually immensely fragile. Women can now wear pants without discrimination because social change demanded they have that right. But it is highly unlikely that society will fight for the right for men to shamelessly walk around in skirts because why would a man want to? Is he a wuss? Is he gay? Even in fashion trends such as gothic, where it is popular for men to wear eyeliner and nail polish, men are ridiculed as feminine and weak. Keeping one’s masculinity is so difficult that the smallest hint of anything deemed female (a high voice, flowery perfume, a tight jacket) ruins your manhood and thus your value in society as a man.
Similarly femininity is just as fragile, but not because women are inherently delicate. Femininity is pretty. It is soft, sweet, vulnerable, pure. Masculinity is rough, dirty, strong, brutish. Not pretty. To add the smallest smudge of masculinity ruins the virginal purity of the girly girl, making her a tomboy. Why would you want to cut off such long beautiful hair or hide your womanly figure? Girls are raised to be princesses, not tomboys. Boys don’t want tomboys, they want a woman, or at least that is what we are taught, leaving girls just as afraid to wear basketball shorts or ties as boys are to wear dresses.
For gender non-conforming people it is perhaps the worst. When their androgynous gender expression leads to pointing out their non-binary gender identity, it too often leads to being told their identity is invalid, which is just one of the many struggles people of non-conforming genders face.
(10/30/14 2:57am)
During intimacy, when does sex officially start? Chances are you’re about to say something along the lines of sex beginning when the penis is inserted into the vagina (or other orifice). But what about lesbians? Is a lesbian who’s never had sex with a man a virgin? The concept of female sexuality, especially lesbian sex, is heavily unexplored and misunderstood by society. In terms of lesbian sex, we may not be experts or have a lot of experience, but like we said in our first article: we’re not experts, we just like bringing up topics we think are important.
We see heterosexual erotica in the media all over. Even every now and then we’ll see the occasional homoerotic male advertisement or fashion photo shoot. But lesbian erotica is rarely displayed and when it is, it’s very misrepresentative.
In order to understand how the public sees lesbian sex, we have go to where society learns about sex in general. Unfortunately, sex is still a taboo subject in the American education system, which means most people are likely to turn to porn for further … education. Since most of porn is consumed by and advertised to men, it would only make sense that porn and the media feature rough, penetrative, finger-sucking foreplay between women as “lesbian sex.”
Why isn’t there a bigger uproar over how lesbian sexuality is portrayed if it’s so wrong? Partially because lesbians generally have a small voice in society, especially in how they are portrayed. Secondly, because the people to whom lesbian porn is marketed (men) and people outside of the loop (straight women/gay men) have no idea and put no thought into what lesbian sex is supposed to be like. Why? Frankly, it’s because people don’t care and aren’t interested, and that’s wrong. When asked about what lesbian sex is, most students on campus came up with terms like “intense scissoring?” and “a lot of oral?” Obviously Middlebury is weak on the queer-lady knowledge.
Like we said in our last article, society loves penis. So if there’s no penis, it can’t even be called sex. Well maybe if there’s a dildo or something, it’s kind of sex, right? But if sex is about penetration, then why don’t men have to be penetrated to lose their virginities? Is it about the orgasm then? Men don’t have to be penetrated when they lose their virginities, but they do orgasm.
But this is also wrong, because it’s focused on the penis. Sure, he ejaculated, but did the woman have a good time? Did you educate yourself on the clitoris? Probably not. There are various sexual activities partners can partake in. Oral, anal, fondling, … the list goes on and we all have our boundaries of when we feel we’ve lost our virginities. Yet lesbians are still often told, they’ve never had ‘real sex.’
That’s because people don’t care about female sexuality. If you ask us, two women being with each other in a sexual act where they make a connection, is a lot more valid than a man penetrating a woman for two minutes without even thinking about her pain or enjoyment in the process.
In the patriarchy of today’s society, the place of a woman is to please a man. So when you’re a lesbian, you’re either going to be fetishized in porn for straight men or simply ignored. The consequences go beyond the extent of people’s understanding of your sex life being a silly little hand gesture. Many lesbians are raped or harassed, under the philosophy that they can be ‘fixed’ once they know what ‘real sex’ is like.
The way our society misunderstands lesbian sex reflects our poor and dangerous understanding of sex in general. Women are human beings and deserve to have proper and enjoyable sexual experiences when they want to (with or without men). And sex is so much more than one part going into another and making babies. It is an experience. And this is why lesbian sex is so wonderful, because despite all the misconceptions, lesbians didn’t learn sex from what porn or the media taught them. It’s an experience of intimacy and discovery, much like all sex should be. Also, we hear the clitoris is lovely.
(10/08/14 11:39pm)
use of gay dating apps such as Grindr and Scruff has changed how people interact and form romantic relationships in the technological world. While many make the argument that the use of these apps helps connect and strengthen the gay community, the insidious effects of commoditizing sex and labeling for the purpose of sexual selection are worth considering.
Launched in 2009, Grindr quickly became the most sensational app for the gay male community. It’s orange glow design, with seemingly endless amounts of headless torsos from ages “twink” to “daddy” won the fickle hearts of gay men around the world. Grindr adequately addresses some of the challenges gay men have with finding other gay men in a heteronormative society, such as location and guessing whether or not the guy next door is gay. It has opened up the doors and closets of gay men in need of affection and it did so by effectively marketing consumers to each other. The app’s simple way of linking the mostly sexual but also non-sexual desires of gays — networking, friendships, or “gym-buddies” — has altered the way gay men see relationships within the gay community.
Realistically speaking, most people who have Grindr or other similar dating apps use them to find the nearest casual hook-up. We would like to make it clear that some people on Grindr aren’t just there for the potential sexual experiences, but for also the great emotions that come along with friendly cyber relationships.
But for the sake of highlighting some of the toxicity that comes along with using these types of apps, we will assume that the vast majority of Grindr users are looking for hook-ups. The purpose of acknowledging this fact is not to “slut-shame” or decide whether the use of Grindr is bad or good for the gay community, but rather to comment on the implications at hand. It is simply important to look at the issues with the commoditization of sex and what behaviors may follow as a result. Even though instant sex sounds like the best thing on earth (and it can be), it would be ludicrous to ignore the relationship between on demand sex and the way we value or devalue intimacy.
One of the more unfortunate things Grindr does is play into the stereotypes and labeling of queer men as a way to promote them to one another. The app even has a “tribe” system that encourages users to label themselves under one of the twelve names such as Bear and Discreet. In an attempt to make it easier for gay men to find and select each other, this aspect of Grindr hinders the diversity that the gay community offers and puts consumption of other gay bodies as the central motivation for interaction. This method also allows gay men to carry through with their own guilt and blindly engage in discrimination against other body types and even races. It is not very rare to find a profile that says “Whites Only!” or “No fatties or femmes” or, our personal favorite, “Masc for Masc.” We understand that everyone is entitled to a sexual preference but at what point does the labeling used to help find potential mates become a mechanism to discriminate against other gays?
What we have noticed is that those that are being shamed for their race body, type and fabulous femme personalities are the ones that don’t typically fall within the margins of how the “ideal” gay man should look like or act. Consequently, the behaviors used in Grindr give in to the creation of a superiority complex within the gay community that is counter to the whole overarching purpose of creating some basic level of solidarity.
To end, we pose this question “Is Grindr simply reflecting the systematic flaws in how society wishes to see gay people or is Grindr enabling gay men to lead their lives clouded by labels and blind discrimination?”