Long, interesting article in the NYT Sunday Magazine (reg. req'd, apologies) about a putatively "underground" community of black men who have sex with other men and who do not self-identify as gay.
There's more than a few problems with the piece. The reportage has a kind of breathless/clueless tone to it - like when the author identifies the phrase "on the DL" as originating in a 1990's TLC song (!) - and a pseudoanthropological,
National Geographic stink of imputed Otherness hangs over the whole enterprise, but I found it compelling anyway.
If nothing else, it's an introduction to a
entire new subculture I had always assumed the existence of, but never seen. (I particularly liked the NYT piece's excursion to a low-rent thug-life amateur pr0n operation. Gibson was right: the street does indeed find its own uses for technology.)
posted by adamgreenfield
on Aug 1, 2003 -
54 comments
