"Reading Harriet the Spy today as an adult, I find a queer subtext throughout. Not only is Harriet the quintessential baby butch, but her best friends, Sport and Janie, run exactly contrary to gender stereotypes. Sport acts as the homemaker and nurturing caretaker of his novelist father, while Janie the scientist plans to blow up the world one day. It was as if Fitzhugh was telling us kids back in the sixties that you didn’t have to play by society’s rules,
the first lesson a queer kid has to learn in order to be happy."
posted by mokin
on Mar 30, 2013 -
74 comments
Civil Rights is a slam poem performed at last year's
Brave New Voices festival. There's a transcript
here, though it's worth noting that the page gets the poem's title wrong.
Written and performed by Shanita Jackson and Dakota Oder, it becomes even more impressive when you realize that both women are still teenagers...and from the looks of it,
Jackson was only fourteen at the time.
posted by MeghanC
on Mar 7, 2013 -
5 comments
Your Holiday Mom: "This season, supportive moms have gathered to send a holiday message to all LGBTQ children, teens and young adults who are without family support and who would like a 'stand-in Holiday Mom'–or 40! Knowing that not every mother is ready to accept her own LGBTQ child exactly as-is (as hard as this is for us to imagine), we moms have written to extend our love beyond that of our own family."
posted by cowboy_sally
on Dec 2, 2012 -
15 comments
However long it takes for a real victory to be certified—no matter what happens on Election Day, it will be too early to unfurl a "Mission Accomplished" banner—the once ragtag march of lovers has acquired an air of inevitability. Edith Eyde's prophecy is almost fulfilled: gays are more or less regular folk. All the same, many who came out during the Stonewall era are wondering what will be lost as the community sheds its pariah status. They are baffled by the latter-day cult of marriage and the military—emblems of Eisenhower's America that the Stonewall generation joyfully rejected. The gay world is confronting a question with which Jews, African-Americans, and other marginalized groups have long been familiar: the price of assimilation.
—
Love on the March by Alex Ross.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 7, 2012 -
60 comments
Bill Brent was the publisher of the zine Black Sheets and the alternative sexuality directory The Black Book and the author of the book How To Make a Zine (
recently republished in a revised edition) as well as a lot of erotica writing. He was very active in the San Francisco Bay Area sexuality, kink, and zine scenes from the early 90s onward. Unfortunately, he committed suicide in August 2012; Liz Highleyman penned an
in-depth obituary of Bill.
posted by larrybob
on Aug 30, 2012 -
13 comments
Right now Baltimore, MD plays host to
FemmeCon, a biannual gathering for those who "seek to explore, discuss, dissect, and support
Queer Femme as a transgressive, gender-queer, stand-alone, and empowered identity and provide a space for organizing and activism within Queer communities". Some of the issues faced by queer femme culture include
femme invisibility in larger queer culture, the
lack of non-stereotypical role models,
being classed 'femme' by default, dismissal as
"too much", as well as intersectional issues of femme with
race,
gender, and
disability. In the meantime, femme subcultures such as
tomboy femme,
hard femme, and
FEMME SHARKS as well as
femmes in specific regions come together for
inspiration,
expression,
power,
creativity and support from each other - as well as from
appreciative butches.
posted by divabat
on Aug 18, 2012 -
111 comments
What happens when you mash up Cinderella, Disney songs, queer culture, and top 40 hits?
This, apparently. [SLYT]
Warning for general ear-worminess. I'll be humming this all week.
posted by MeghanC
on Jul 28, 2012 -
12 comments
The two largest groups that provide ex-gay counseling are Exodus International, a nondenominational Christian organization, and NARTH, its secular counterpart. If Exodus is the spirit of the ex-gay movement, NARTH is the brain. The organizations share many members, and Exodus parrots the developmental theories about same-sex attractions espoused by NARTH. Together with the late Charles Socarides, a psychiatrist who led the opposition to declassifying homosexuality as a mental illness, Nicolosi formed NARTH in 1992 as a 'scientific organization that offers hope to those who struggle with unwanted homosexuality.' By 1998, the group was holding an annual conference, publishing its own journal, and training hundreds of psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors. Nicolosi remains NARTH’s most visible advocate.
[...] When I first reach Nicolosi on the phone, he says he remembers me well and that he is surprised that I 'went in the gay direction. You really seemed to get it.'Gabriel Arana talks about his experiences with attempting to change his sexual orientation:
My So-Called Ex-Gay Life.
posted by shakespeherian
on Apr 11, 2012 -
31 comments
YA authors asked to 'straighten' gay characters. Two YA authors posted about their
unhappy experience with trying to find an agent for their book that includes gay characters. Soon, a representative of the previously unnamed agency (though also not the actual agent in question) posts a
rebuttal. Debate flies back and forth in the comments, on
Twitter, and on various blogs, with writers coming forward with their own experiences. (
1 2 3, among many others.) Cleolinda has a detailed and informative
summary of the whole situation. (
Previously.)
posted by kmz
on Sep 19, 2011 -
55 comments
Want to know what your old high school is doing to protect and support its LGBTQ students?
Write Your Principal encourages and collects correspondence about anti-bullying efforts between alumni and their alma maters. [via
projects]
posted by lalex
on Oct 18, 2010 -
17 comments
1969: The Year of Gay Liberation is an online exhibit of the New York Public Library focusing on the radical gay rights movements of the late sixties and early seventies, focusing on the organizations The Mattachine Society of New York, Daughters of Bilitis, Gay News, Gay Liberation Front, Radicalesbians, Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries and the Gay Activists Alliance, and the events of the Stonewall Riot and Christopher Street Liberation Day. This is but one part of the NYPL's fine
LGBT collection, which includes, among other things,
resources for teens,
AIDS/HIV collections, and digital collections on
ACT UP,
Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen,
Bessie Bonehill,
Gertrude Stein,
Gran Fury,
Julian Eltinge,
Richard Wandel and
Walt Whitman.
posted by Kattullus
on Oct 1, 2009 -
14 comments
What with all the changes lately, sometimes I'm not sure where my right to marry whomever I want to has been ensured.
Can I Marry Gay? is a handy reference with state by state information, and keeps me up to date. Worried about recent state Supreme Court decisions forcing you to join teh gay?
Must I Marry Gay? is for you. [via
mefi projects]
posted by ocherdraco
on May 20, 2009 -
48 comments
how helpful. a relatively complete listing of gay pride days around the world. just in case you're proud only once a year.
posted by patricking
on Jun 17, 2000 -
5 comments
