gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender & queer encyclopedia

Adventure trips Chad

admin — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:36:54 +0000

The Republic of Chad is a country in central Africa. In 1885 the French took over the territory, Chad was part of French Equatorial Africa. Became independent on August 11, 1960, a one-party system that resulted in political and social instability to which the Republican government.
The most important economic activities are agriculture and livestock, cotton is the main export product, apart from that practice subsistence agriculture.

Tourism in Chad.

The Republic of Chad, is formed by several landscapes in the northern part is the hilly region in the central area are the desert and dry plains, southern lowlands formed by a large plateau surrounded by major rivers the Logone Chariy that feed the lake Chad. In the latter region is where most of the settled population and where they have managed to progress the main cities. This all attract you to adventure trips Chad.

Some of the characteristics of their markets in Chad are a mixture of people from different ethnic groups and where tourists can find all kinds of crafts or for everyday use.

Cities and tourist sites in Chad.

• N’Djamena (N Djamena), capital of the country, founded by the French as strong (Fort Lamy) can be observed with a colonial architecture neighborhoods of adobe houses and more modern buildings like private fly mig, this is the most culturally rich Chad. Yamel in the museum, the Modern Cathedral, the great market, the strengths of Kussery, Minia Sinianka Reserve or National Park Zakouma.

• Abeche, Arabic is a city that is surrounded by ramparts, where you can visit Independence Square may found l-39 image and the palace of Sultan. Abeche is a commercial center, attracting large caravans of merchants for their markets and mosques.

• Faya-Largeau, Cologne is situated in an oasis that serves as a meeting point for sellers nomad. The guns of red tile.

• Sarh, is a quiet town, which has wide avenues, here is the National Museum of Sarh. It has an airport and is a city well known for its nightlife.

Other tourist attractions in Chad.

• Grand Marché (Central Market).
• Avenue Charles de Gaulle.
• The peak Kussi Ami, throat Modra, the famous hole natron.
• Lake Chad.
• Tibesti Mountains.
• Reserve Abu telf.
• The Reserve Wadi Rime.
• The Reserve Wadi Achim.

African-American Literature: Gay Male

admin — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:24:37 +0000

The African-American gay male tradition in literature–though it has yet to receive adequate scholarly attention–consists of a substantial body of texts, spans a period of nearly seven decades, and includes some of the most gifted writers of the twentieth-century. It is a rich and vibrant tradition; its vitality emerges at least in part from the complexities of the black gay lives that it articulates and affirms. It is an intensely political tradition that offers relentless and simultaneous challenges to black as well as white homophobiahomophobia, to straight as well as queerqueer racism.
Yet its concerns extend far beyond social protest to engage a wide variety of issues that range from quintessentially African-American themes to universally human ones. Begun on a modest scale by a pioneering coterie of writers in Harlem during the 1920s, the gay male tradition in African-American literature was vastly strengthened by James Baldwin during the 1950s and 1960s. And since the mid-1980s, a host of talented artists have emerged to generate a veritable renaissance in black gay writing.
The Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, celebrated as a most significant event in the African-American intellectual tradition, was also a crucial moment in gay literary history. Many of its central protagonists–such as Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and Richard Bruce Nugent–were either gay or bisexual.
Locke, a professor at Howard University and one of the most distinguished scholars of the era, was an older gay man who became a mentor to many of the Harlem-based young male artists of the day. His intellectual presence and personal friendship–coupled with the fact that Nugent, Cullen, McKay, and others were at least peripherally involved in the then thriving gay and lesbian community of Harlem–perhaps encouraged them to explore, though discreetly, the subject of homosexuality in their works.
Richard Bruce Nugent’s “Sadhji,” a short story included in Locke’s The New Negro (1925), is arguably the first gay text published by an African-American male. But it is his thinly disguised autobiographical narrative titled “Smoke, Lilies and Jade” (1926) that remains the most defiantly explicit gay text produced during the Harlem Renaissance. Unapologetic in its rhapsodic celebration of male beauty, it first appeared in Fire!!–an avant-garde journal published by the Harlem literati with the explicit intention of shocking the conservative black bourgeois readership. Nugent, unperturbed by the notoriety that his text earned him, continued to engage gay themes in many of his subsequent works.
Some of the other writers of the Harlem Renaissance, however, were more cautious than Nugent. Novelists such as Wallace Thurman and Claude McKay, both of whom were bisexual, introduced gay themes in their works though neither treated the subject with Nugent’s exceptional candor.
Thurman’s first novel, Blacker the Berry (1929), a poignant exploration of the psychology of the oppressed, has an unsympathetic bisexual male character. His second novel, Infants of the Spring (1933), a hilarious satire on the Harlem Renaissance and its major figures, has an important bisexual male character, and the friendship between two other male characters in the novel has obvious homoerotic qualities.
Similar homoerotic male bonding is a feature of McKay’s Banjo (1929). And his Home to Harlem (1928), a sensational portrayal of Harlem life in the Jazz Age, has a minor black male character.
Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen tend to be even more cautious. Hughes, in fact, appears to have taken extraordinary measures to conceal his bisexuality; perceptive (gay) readers, however, may easily sense the homoerotichomoerotic undertones in poems such as “Young Sailor” and “Cafe: 3 A.M.” as well as in the elaborate sexual silences that mark his major autobiographical works such as The Big Sea (1940) and I Wonder as I Wander (1956).
Like Hughes, Cullen too prefers to reveal his gay self only through coded language, as in poems such as “The Black Christ,” “Tableau,” “Every Lover,” and “Song in Spite of Myself,” among others.
The relative sexual reticence of the Harlem writers, however, has to be understood in the larger cultural contexts in which they lived and created art. Unlike their white peers who had the luxury of living in a society that viewed their whiteness as normative, the black artists had to confront in their daily lives as well as in their imaginative works the painfully problematic implications of their racial identity.
The issue of race, therefore, was a politically necessary and personally compelling concern for all the writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Their art reflects this preoccupation. The demands of their audiences further complicated their predicament: Both black and white readers expected the writers to foreground the race-specific aspects of the African-American experience.
And the economics of the literary marketplace and the tenuousness of the black writer’s position in the United States during the 1920s denied them the level of artistic freedom and personal autonomy necessary for forthright explorations of unconventional sexualities. Therefore, it is indeed remarkable that several gay and bisexual writers of the Harlem Renaissance, despite numerous daunting obstacles, managed to project discreetly into their art their private sexual concerns. The gay ambience that they helped generate did in fact succeed in providing a mildly subversive shape to the sexual and racial politics inscribed in the literature of the Harlem Renaissance.
James Baldwin
James Baldwin emerged on the American literary scene almost a generation after the collapse of the Harlem Renaissance. His entry marks a nodal point in the development of the African-American gay male literary tradition. An outsider in every sense of the term, Baldwin was poor, black, gay, and extraordinarily gifted. He launched from his marginal location an articulate and sustained attack on the dominant cultural fictions of race and sexuality.
Intellectually daring and fiercely eloquent, he became one of the most celebrated writers of his time. Although he occupies an important place in African-American as well as gay American literatures, the significance of his life and work in the specific context of the black gay male literary tradition is immeasurable. He continues to be its defining figure.
“The Preservation of Innocence” (1949), an essay that Baldwin published in Zero, a Moroccan journal, within months after his arrival in Paris, is an early signal of his personal willingness to engage the topic of homosexuality in a public forum. “Outing,” a short story he published in 1951, is his first tentative attempt to approach the topic in fiction; the story is a gracefully subtle portrayal of adolescent homosexual awakening.
In his first major work of fiction, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Baldwin explores the adolescent consciousness on a more elaborate scale, and here he presents the youthful protagonist’s emerging homosexual awareness as a subtle but integral part of his quest for personal identity.
By the mid-1950s Baldwin had earned his reputation as an important African-American writer; his readers and critics had come to expect in his works incisive analyses of the black experience. But in 1956 he disappointed a good many of them by publishing Giovanni’s Room, a novel with an all-white cast that poignantly documented the consequences of internalized homophobia through its young protagonist’s unwillingness to accept his gayness.
For a young black writer to publish such an openly gay narrative in the mid-1950s was an enormously risky endeavor: The political climate in the United States was hardly ready for such honesty, and there was a very real possibility that the publication of such a novel might permanently damage his career. That Baldwin took such a risk is a testament to his immense personal courage and artistic integrity.
He survived the controversy generated by Giovanni’s Room and, in that process, earned his preeminent place in the gay American literary tradition. More important, its publication liberated Baldwin from the closet and enabled him to treat gay and bisexual themes even more vigorously and explicitly in three of his subsequent major works of fiction: Another Country (1962), Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (1968), and Just Above My Head (1979). And through such works he helped create the necessary space for a new generation of talented young black gay writers who followed him.
Contemporary African-American Gay Male Writers
Even though Baldwin’s influence on the current generation of African-American gay writers is a vital and enduring one, a number of other cultural factors have also helped nurture the new artists. The civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the Stonewall Riots, the predominantly white-led and often racially insensitive gay liberation movement, and the emergence of a confident black gay and lesbian middle-class gave impetus to the growth of political activism among black gay men and lesbians during the 1970s and 1980s.
The new personal and political consciousness led to the establishment of many black gay and lesbian organizations, to the publication of several specialized journals (though many were short-lived), and to the articulation of a specifically black gay and lesbian cultural agenda.
These developments inevitably affected black gay literary creativity. Initially black gay artists, rejected by straight- as well as gay-owned presses, published their works largely in black gay journals and in privately printed chapbooks. This practice still continues on a significant scale. However, given the recent phenomenon of many publishers’ relative openness to gay material in general, some black gay writers, at least since the mid-1980s, have been reasonably successful in placing their manuscripts with major trade publishers and, on rare occasions, even with prestigious university presses.
Further, the growing interest of nonblack gay readers in black gay texts–as the commercial success of recent works by Essex Hemphill and Assoto Saint clearly suggests–has given additional stimulus to the production, publication, and circulation of black gay literature.
The literary styles of the post-Baldwin generation of black gay writers differ widely; they range from the innovative science fiction of Samuel Delany to the rich magic-realist narratives of Randall Kenan; from the revisionist Southern gothicism of Melvin Dixon to the campycampy elegance of Larry Duplechan; from the densely allusive academic poetry of Carl Phillips to the aggressive agit-prop lyrics of Essex Hemphill.
They engage a variety of themes as well: from the more private concerns of identity, love, family, and relationships to the larger political issues of racist violence and homophobic repression.
Major Themes
Although it is risky to make any sweeping generalizations about this diverse body of literature, it is possible to identify at least four major themes that dominate the works of contemporary black gay male writers: the complex relationship between the individual black gay self and the larger African-American community, the devastating consequences of racism, the pain and the possibilities of interracial love, and the tragedy of AIDS.
The relationship between the individual black self and the black community–a frequent theme in African-American literature in general–surfaces insistently in the works of many contemporary black gay male writers. Since a strong and enabling sense of racial self is necessary to cope with the psychological assaults of white racism, the black gay male protagonist can rarely afford to disconnect himself completely from the black community and seek total assimilation into the predominantly white gay community.
But the black community, with its heterosexist values, is often not prepared to accommodate his sexuality unproblematically. The tension that arises from these conflicting sources of black gay identity, therefore, constitutes one of the central features of black gay literature. Joseph Beam’s defiant declaration in his introduction to the ground-breaking anthology, In the Life (1986), clearly reveals the potential drama inherent in this tension: “We are coming home with our heads held up high.”
Similarly, Gordon Heath’s autobiographical Deep Are the Roots (1992), poignantly illustrates the narrator’s determined struggle to claim his racial as well as sexual birthrights. Even when a protagonist fails in his struggle to harmonize his conflicting subjectivities–young Horace in Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits (1989), for example, commits suicide–the individual failure is also presented as a violent indictment of the community’s inhumane rigidity.
Racism is another central concern in the works of virtually every contemporary black gay artist. Writers who are anthologized in Other Countries (1988), In the Life (1986), Brother to Brother (1991), The Road Before Us (1991), and Here to Dare (1992) not only challenge American racism in general but also vigorously expose the racism of white gay communities.
Some writers, such as Randall Kenan and Steven Corbin, offer broad historical perspectives on racism; others, such as Essex Hemphill, Craig Harris, and Assoto Saint, bear painfully personal testimony to racial injury. Even in the works of Larry Duplechan–someone who argues that his gay self is significantly more important to him than his racial self–there is considerable concern with racism and its maiming effects.
Despite the preoccupation with racism–or, perhaps, precisely because of it–interracial love is a recurrent theme in recent African-American gay literature. There are, of course, many writers who focus only on intraracial gay relationships and celebrate the black male body as a site of pleasure, but there are others who, with remarkable honesty, reveal their colonized sexual imaginations.
Robert Westley, for example, goes looking for “the last big-dick/White boy” (”The Pub” in Here to Dare), while Thom Beam writes a plaintive “Love Song for White Boys Who Don’t Know Who I Am” (in The Road Before Us). Reginald Shepard’s “On Not Being White” (in In the Life) is an exquisitely painful statement on colonial desire, just as Essex Hemphill’s “Heavy Breathing” (in Ceremonies [1992]) reveals his erotic longing for a white gay man who studiously rejects black partners. Assoto Saint’s autobiographical Stations (1989) is a paean to enduring interracial love. Likewise, Canaan Parker’s The Color of Trees (1992), set on the campus of an elite prep school in New England, affirms the possibility of love that transcends cultural and class differences.
But other writers sound far less sanguine about the durability of cross-racial connections. Duplechan’s Eight Days in a Week (1985), for example, deals with the relationship between Johnnie Ray, who is black, and Keith, who is white. Their relationship ultimately fails: Their racial difference, which is the basis of their desire for each other, ironically proves to be too disruptive. More disturbing, Corbin’s Fragments That Remain (1993) and Dixon’s Vanishing Rooms (1991) suggest that a white man, even when he is very much in love with a black man, can remain fundamentally racist.
AIDS is yet another dominant concern of contemporary African-American gay writers. Without referring to AIDS by name, Delany examines in Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985) the distressing impact of the plague on the collective psyche of a frightened population. Duplechan, in Tangled Up in Blue (1989), explores the insidious effects AIDS has on individuals and on relationships by focusing on Maggie and Daniel Sullivan, a straight couple, and Crockett, their gay friend.
But even more compelling because of their emotional immediacy are the numerous testimonial narratives and poems–by writers such as David Frechette, Assoto Saint, Bobby Smith, Donald Woods, and many others–that bear witness to illness and death, mourn the loss of friends and lovers, and memorialize the many thousands gone.
Some of the most talented black gay writers of the post-Baldwin generation, including Melvin Dixon, Craig Harris, Joseph Beam, Essex Hemphill, and Assoto Saint, among others, have already died of AIDS-related illnesses. Still others are fighting personal battles against the infection. Contemporary black gay writing, therefore, reflects a mounting sense of emergency while it continues to give voice and visibility to black gay men living through these treacherous times.

Subjects of the Visual Arts: Nude Males

admin — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:19:38 +0000

Throughout much of history, the nude male figure was virtually the only subject that could be used to articulate homoerotichomoerotic desire in publicly displayed works of art. In most cases, representations of nude males were intended to embody the spiritual and political ideals of the societies in which they were produced. Only rarely were erotic qualities overtly emphasized in public works. Nevertheless, artists, patrons, and viewers who recognized the sensual appeal of these figures almost certainly exploited them to nourish their romantic lives.
In many cultures, sexually explicit depictions of male nudes were confined to works of art intended for discreet, private “consumption.” Unfortunately, the study of these images has been inhibited by the efforts of successive waves of conservative political and religious groups, who have sought to find and destroy “offensive” erotic works.
For a variety of reasons, most modern scholars have been reluctant to study and publish extant images. The recovery and systematic analysis of visual expressions of homoerotic desire in earlier cultures remain urgent tasks for scholars.
In the post-Stonewall era, many artists have publicly exhibited images of nude men infused with erotic desire. Moreover, contemporary artists have utilized nude figures to explain complex political, social, and spiritual issues from distinctly queerqueer perspectives.
Because the nude male has been a major theme in the visual arts, this article can mention only representative examples from various periods; important artists and works are necessarily omitted. For the purposes of this essay, the terms gay and queer are used to refer to any images relevant to the study of same-sex love. However, these modern categories do not adequately express the open-ended understanding of sexuality characteristic of many earlier cultures.
Ancient Art
A fluid conception of sexuality characterized the ancient civilizations of India. Among the major living religions, Hinduism was unique in celebrating all manifestations of sexuality as means to transcend the limits of temporal, earthly existence and to attain unity with the divine principle.
In accord with these beliefs, the exteriors of many temple complexes in India originally were covered by sculptural figures of men and women enthusiastically engaged in all kinds of sexual play. These images simultaneously represented both deities and ordinary mortals.
Although mixed gender configurations predominated, same-sex couples and groups also were shown. Successive waves of Islamic and British invaders succeeded in destroying most of the sexual scenes on Hindu temples, but some examples have remained intact, as at the Vishvanatha Temple at Khajuraho (950-1050).
In contrast to later Western practice, ancient Greek culture esteemed erotic bonds among men, believing that they could, among other positive contributions, encourage heroism in war.
Thus, for example, it was generally recognized that Harmodius and Aristogiton, who established democracy in Athens through their courageous attack on dictatorship in 514 B.C.E., were devoted lovers. The Tyrannicide Monument (477 B.C.E., based upon the original of 510 B.C.E.) was erected in Athens to commemorate their patriotic achievement.
This monument has great importance in art history as one of the earliest and most impressive manifestations of the characteristic Classical Greek expression of social values through the use of idealized, but anatomically correct nude male figures.
The emotional rapport of the men is suggested by the way that Aristogen extends his arm, as if to shield his partner from attack. However, their relationship is not otherwise indicated; the public context of the sculptural monument restrained the explicit expression of their love, which was, however, readily acknowledged in written sources.
Although they did not depict sexually explicit themes in large scale sculpture, ancient Greeks frequently represented erotic interactions among nude male figures in the painted decoration of vases and pots.
The scenes ranged from casual flirtations between bearded older and smooth-faced younger men (for example, Men and Youths Courting, painted in approximately 540 B.C.E. by the Berlin Painter on a black-figure amphora) to wild “orgies” (for example, Dionysian Revelry on a black-figure vase of the 6th century B.C.E. and “Boisterous” Satyrs on a cup by the Nikosthenes Painter, 6th century B.C.E.).
Despite their exuberance, these images rigorously adhere to conventions, which (at least in theory) regulated same-sex relations among men in ancient Greece. Men were encouraged to nurture the physical and intellectual skills of “worthy” youths. Sex was an accepted part of these relationships, provided that the (older) men consistently assumed the “active” roles. Once a youth had passed through puberty, men were expected to “break off” any intimate associations with their protégés.
Nude male figures reveal that conceptions of gender and sexuality had broadened considerably during the Hellenistic era (approximately 330-150 B.C.E.). The Apollo Belvedere (a marble copy of the bronze original of 300 B.C.E.), one of the most influential ancient statues, exemplifies the androgynousandrogynous treatment of the male nude, which became increasingly frequent in the Hellenistic period. Elongated proportions, smooth flesh, and graceful pose distinguish this statue from such earlier classical works as the Tyrannicide Monument.
At the opposite extreme of the Apollo Belvedere is the Farnese Hercules (a Roman copy of a Hellenistic original of approximately 330 B.C.E.), notable for its exaggerated muscularity and bulky proportions. The legends of both Apollo and Hercules included numerous same-sex encounters; thus, as in modern “gay” culture, “feminized” and “ultra-masculine” figures equally could be associated with homoerotic desire.
The charismatic and powerful leader, Alexander the Great (d. 323 B.C.E.), is known to have been deeply devoted to his soldier-companions. His love for his advisor and companion Hephaestion is celebrated in a Hellenistic relief (preserved in a Roman Syrian marble copy, approximately 200 B.C.E.), which shows the nude Alexander standing next to the clothed figure of his lover.
Ancient Roman artists produced numerous copies of Greek nude figures for wealthy patrons, but the Romans were less likely than the Greeks to employ full nudity in public images of national leaders and heroes. Although not illegal, same-sex love was no longer commonly associated with patriotic virtue or with the education of young men.
Nevertheless, the Emperor Hadrian (reigned 117-138 C.E.) sought to promote devotion to his lover, Antinous; after his accidental death (d. 130 C.E.), the Emperor commissioned numerous (partially clothed) statues of the beautiful young man for display throughout the empire.
Same-sex love also was celebrated in the famous sculptural group variously identified as the Ildefonso Group and as Castor and Pollux (Madrid: Prado, date uncertain), which depicts two nude, athletic figures casually embracing. However, outside the imperial court, men who favored the passive role in same-sex intercourse were generally regarded as an inferior class, and a variety of derogatory terms were devised to refer to them.
Despite (or perhaps because of) the decline in the valuation of same-sex relations, a vibrant homosexual subculture emerged in the physical and social “fringes” of Roman cities. Quickly and cheaply painted scenes of lively nude male figures engaged in a wide variety of sexual activities covered the walls of bathhouses (such as the House of Jupiter and Ganymede, Ostia, Italy, 184-192 C.E.), which served as gathering places for men who were attracted to other men.
The Warren Cup (first century C.E.), an exquisitely executed silver vessel, deserves special mention, as it depicts beautiful and dignified figures breaking the taboos that normally limited same-sex experiences in Rome. In violation of the principle that citizens should assume only “active” sexual roles, one side of the Warren Cup shows a citizen lowering himself onto the penis of a “foreign” worker; the evident eagerness with which he seats himself on the penis also challenges limited notions of “top” and “bottom.”
Early Modern Art
As part of wide-ranging efforts to impose uniform “moral” standards, homosexual acts were made illegal throughout Europe during the medieval period. Regarded as an incitement to lust, nudity of any kind was discouraged in the visual arts.
Not surprisingly, men, who were attracted to other men, played a major role in reviving the classical theme of the nude male figure during the Renaissance; only a few of these major figures can be noted here.
For example, Donatello, whose attraction to young men is well documented, created the first life-size nude male statue since the ancient Roman period: the bronze David (1430s). In an elegant contrapposto pose, directly based on ancient Greek works, David stands with one foot on the head of the slain Goliath.
Emphasizing the erotic implications of this statue are the feathers of Goliath’s helmet, which extend all the way up David’s legs to his crotch. The educated Renaissance viewer certainly would have understood the implications of the triumph of Eros depicted on the helmet. Although stripped of his garments, David is shown wearing a hat, popular among young working class youths in Florence. The intense naturalism with which the adolescent body is depicted suggests the artist’s careful (and admiring) study of his apprentices.
Although prohibitions against homosexual acts were still rigorously enforced, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (1477-1549) boldly chose to be called by the nickname “Il Sodoma” (the sodomitesodomite). His numerous paintings of nude martyred saints (such as Saint Sebastian, 1542) evoke both the sensual beauties of the male body and the physical and verbal abuse that his public stance “provoked.”
Renaissance artists generally depended upon the requirements of mythological and religious subjects to justify the inclusion of nude figures. However, the prominent German artist, Albrecht Dürer portrayed naked men provocatively gazing at one another in the contemporary setting of the Bathhouse (woodcut, 1496); he emphasized the sexual implications of the scene by placing a cock (rooster) on top of the large faucet that projected in front of one of the figures.
The most famous of all Renaissance artists, Michelangelo utilized the nude male figure to represent the highest ideals of his culture: whether political, as in the case of David (1504), a symbol of the Republic of Florence, or spiritual, as in the case of the Risen Christ (1516). The sensual beauty so disconcerted many contemporary viewers that their genitals were concealed (in opposition to the will of the artist) a few years after their completion.
In contrast to Il Sodoma, Michelangelo fully absorbed Catholic proscriptions against same-sex intimacy, and his diaries and letters reveal that he suffered from profound guilt because of his love for other men. He revealed his conflicting feelings about his sexual desires in a pair of drawings in 1533 made for his beloved Tomasso Cavalieri: Ganymede, which depicts the beautiful, nude adolescent being carried up to heaven by an embracing eagle, and Tityos, which shows an eagle eating the intestines of a very similar figure.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Caravaggio, who boldly flaunted his attraction to other men, created numerous homoerotic works, including provocative variations upon famous representations of nude figures by Michelangelo. For instance, his Love Triumphant (1602), based upon an allegorical statue of Victory by Michelangelo (1530s), shows a naturalistically depicted street youth trampling on symbols of human achievement.
Caravaggio’s overt challenge to constrictive moral standards was not continued by later artists during the Baroque era, when both artists and their works increasingly were expected to conform to heterosexual “norms.” However, Guido Reni’s Saint Sebastian (1615) eloquently reveals that nude figures, required by certain devotional and mythological subjects, could be infused with a languid and subtly subversive sexuality.
At the same time that Catholic and Protestant reform movements were seeking to restrict both nudity and homoeroticism in European art, Japan witnessed a remarkable flourishing of sexually explicit art, which was avidly collected by the prosperous middle classes. Many famous and popular artists depicted scenes of lovemaking in the male and female brothels legalized throughout the reign of the Tokugawa dynasty (1603-1868).
Only a relatively small percentage of the many hundreds of scenes of male prostitutes and their clients depict full nudity; Yoshida Hanbei’s A Sexually Excited Male Prostitute with a Client (woodblock print, 1705) and the anonymous Sexually Aroused Men Kissing (woodblock print, mid-18th century) are among those that do.
More typically, as in Nishikawa Sukenobu’s Customer with Boy Prostitute (scroll painting, early 18th century), the figures were shown with some items of clothing to indicate social class and sexual roles. However, genitals and anus consistently were not only exposed, but also emphasized through enlargement, strong outlining, and other devices.
Nineteenth-Century Art
At the height of the French Revolution in 1791, sodomy among consenting adults was decriminalized, and the Napoleonic Code of 1804 reaffirmed the legalization of same-sex relations. Thus, it is not surprising that numerous prominent artists exhibited paintings of overtly homoerotic nudes at the Paris Salons in the early nineteenth century.
For example, the sinuously posed nude figures of Achilles and Patroclus establish a sensual mood in Ingres’ Achilles Receiving the Ambassadors of Agamemnon (1801).
Hippolyte Flandrin’s Figure d’Etude (1835), which depicts a youthful model with his head bent down onto his raised knees, freed the homoerotic subject from the requirements of a mythological or historical theme.
Because the pose conceals the genitals, rules of “propriety” were respected, and a reproduction of this painting (purchased for the Louvre by Napoleon III) could be displayed openly in one’s home without fear of reprisal; the mountain setting also dignified Flandrin’s work, by infusing it with the mood of the “sublime,” so esteemed by the Romantic movement.
This painting quickly became a widely recognized and enduring symbol of same-sex desire; it continues to be referenced in innumerable ads directed to the gay community (for causes ranging from AIDS prevention to ocean cruises). The many later variations of Flandrin’s famous composition include Robert Mapplethorpe’s Ajitto (1981), which depicts an African-American model with an erect penis.
Despite Flandrin’s example, most nineteenth-century artists depended on classical themes to “justify” sensual depictions of nude male figures. Thus, for example, Jean Delville’s School of Plato (1898) depicts the ancient philosopher surrounded by languidly posed, nude youths; Delville’s androgynous conception of the nude was characteristic of many of the artists associated with the Aesthetic Movement of the late nineteenth century.
Among adherents of this style, Simeon Solomon is particularly noteworthy because he raised complex personal and social issues through his treatments of such subjects as Bridegroom and Sad Love (1865); this painting represents a nude youth dispassionately kissing the forehead of his bride while he fondles the genitals of the sorrowful adult Cupid standing alongside him.
Such powerful treatments of the problems affecting same-sex love in modern Britain caused Solomon to be ostracized by many other artists, even before his career was cut short by the scandal surrounding his arrest in 1873 for soliciting sex in a London public toilet.
The new medium of photography was exploited by artists seeking to record the beauties of the male figure. Settling in Taormina, Sicily in the 1880s, the German baron Wihelm von Gloeden devoted himself to photographing local youths, posed nude with garlands and other classical attributes. Justifying his project by the goal of recreating the splendors of the ancient world, he established a successful mail-order business, selling his works to wealthy men throughout Europe and the Americas.
The American painter Thomas Eakins also recorded the appearance of nude youths in numerous photographs, which he intended as preparatory studies for such paintings as The Swimming Hole (1885). Inspired by Walt Whitman’s glorification of the common man, Eakins sought to create naturalistic, distinctly American images of heroic, nude male figures.
Twentieth-Century Art
In the first decades of the twentieth century, well-known artists began to create more sexually explicit and accurate images of the lifestyles of men in the nascent “gay” subculture. For instance, in the late 1910s, the American painter Charles Demuth created several watercolors of men engaged in sexual play in New York bathhouses; he restricted the circulation of these works, giving them as gifts to close friends.
Later in the century, George Platt Lynes, a prominent fashion photographer, created elegantly posed, intensely erotic photographs of men (such as Nude Man, 1932) for a carefully screened and discreet wealthy clientele. A friend of his, painter Paul Cadmus boldly created for public display monumental paintings depicting the lives of urban gay men; these included numerous paintings of nudes, such as Horseplay (1935) and The Bath (1951).
Deliberately positioning himself outside the mainstream art world, the prolific Tom of Finland (Touko Laaksonen), created countless drawings of nude working class men, joyfully engaging in S&M sexual play. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he informally circulated his images through “underground” networks, based in European gay bars.
The subsequent publication of his images in magazines catering to the emerging gay “market” helped to make them widely available. His portrayals of self-confident, athletic, and highly sexed men served as prototypes for gay “clones” in the 1970s and later decades.
Among the many later gay artists influenced by Tom of Finland’s work is the prominent Japanese painter, Sadao Hasegawa. In such works as Lion Dance (1982) and Secret Ritual (1987), Hasegawa successfully sought to incorporate Tom’s hyper-masculinity and exuberant sexuality into innovative depictions of themes ultimately inspired by the spiritual traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism.
In the 1980s, Robert Mapplethorpe defied taboos that still restricted exposure of explicit depictions of (homo)sexuality. In prominent fine arts galleries and museums in the United States and Europe, he exhibited carefully and elegantly composed “close-up” photographs that captured nude men in the midst of fisting and other S&M activities.
The Perfect Moment, a nationally touring exhibition of his work (1988-1990), provoked unprecedented furor, culminating in the arrest and trial of a museum curator on charges of disseminating pornography. Even many gay community leaders criticized the intense sexuality of Mapplethorpe’s work as inappropriate in the era of AIDS.
In addition, his Black Male series (including such images as Thomas on a Pedestal, 1986) was attacked for its objectification of the black body. However, Mapplethorpe eloquently defended his goal of portraying the beauties of individuals who were overlooked in the mainstream art world.
Breaking with conventions that effectively restricted nude male images to depictions of athletic, young, white men, many recent artists have sought to produce works of art that reflect the actual diversity and complexity of queer communities.
Such photographers as Australian Jamie Dunbar (for example, Posithiv Sex Happens, 1993) and Americans Mark I. Chester (for example, Robert Chesley–ks portrait, 1991), George Dureau (Wilbert Hines, 1983), Lyle Ashton Harris (Constructs, 1989), and Peter Hujar (Manny, undated) have devoted themselves to creating powerful nude images of men who would normally be excluded from representation because of their age, social class, HIV status, physical condition, and/or race.
Numerous contemporary queer artists have exploited the nude figure to create provocative narratives, with great psychological and political resonance. For instance, Nigerian-born photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode conceived several transcultural series (Metaphysick: Every Moment Counts, 1991, among others) that synthesized Western conceptions of erotic art with Yoruba spiritual traditions.
The prominent Mexican artist Nahum Zenil has made his own nude body the primary subject of his work. In Dart Game (1994), Zenil depicts himself (in the pose of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, a symbol of Renaissance ideals) against a target with the colors of the Mexican flag; he thus reveals the dangers to which he willingly has subjected himself as a very outspoken proponent of gay rights.
Sunil Gupta (a Canadian citizen and United Kingdom resident, born in India) is among the many contemporary queer artists who have found inspiration in historical art. For example, in the photographic series No Solutions (1990), Gupta depicted himself and his British partner (in various stages of undress) in positions that are deliberately evocative of ancient Hindu erotic sculpture.
To reinforce the references to earlier Hindu work, Gupta paired each of his photographs with a popular Indian religious print. Displayed with captions taken from an Indian government proposal to ban sex between Indian citizens and foreigners, No Solutions raised a variety of urgent political, spiritual, and personal questions. This piece eloquently reveals the links between historical and contemporary queer culture, and it well exemplifies the vitality and complexity of recent images of the male nude.

Twentieth-Century European Art

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 13:05:00 +0000

A large number of significant twentieth-century European artists focused on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender themes, making such concerns crucial to the understanding of twentieth-century art.
These artists span all the major art movements and are too numerous for all of them to be mentioned in a condensed essay. By necessity, the individuals discussed here constitute only a representative sample of the diverse range of twentieth-century artistic production in Europe of particular interest to glbtq people.
Henry Tuke and Ethel Walker
The careers of two British painters, Henry Scott Tuke (1859-1929) and Dame Ethel Walker (1861-1951), peaked during the early part of the century.
Tuke belonged to a circle of poets and writers who discussed and wrote about the beauty of male youth. His paintings of male nudes are notably sensual. The oil painting Noonday Heat (1903), for example, presents two youths who, relaxing on the beach, are completely engrossed in their own private world. Since neither of them addresses the viewer, their relationship seems intimate, exclusive, and ambiguous.
Dame Ethel Walker produced her major works late in her life: from the time she was in her fifties until her death at the age of ninety. She did not demonstrate any special interest in art until she formed a close friendship with Clara Christian in the 1880s; thereafter, the two women lived, studied, and worked together as fellow artists.
Walker is perhaps best known for her portraits of women. She captures her sitters’ individual temperaments and expressions. Her obvious, tactile brushstrokes obscure unnecessary detail, thereby allowing the artist to emphasize the compositional aspects that capture the mood of her sitter.
Léonor Fini and the Surrealists
While artists such as Walker and Tuke represented the natural world in their art works, those individuals influenced by the Surrealist movement sought to discover, or even to be liberated into, an alternate reality. According to the Surrealists, this “new” reality necessitated the freeing of the unconscious and included outward manifestations of sexual desire.
The Surrealist attitude toward sexuality was revolutionary. The Surrealists celebrated and concretized desire in their theories, writings, and art works. Some of them manifested their beliefs in sexually open lifestyles.
Painter Léonor Fini (1907-1996) never officially joined the Surrealists but she displayed her works in many of their exhibitions. She had many lovers of both sexes. She never married but eventually settled with three individuals: two men, one mostly a friend, the other mostly a lover (Stanislao Lepri, a diplomat turned highly successful painter), and one female lover (Constanine Jelenski, a celebrated Polish poet and writer).
A child prodigy, Fini was born in Buenos Aires to an Argentine father and an Italian mother. When she was a young child, her mother fled Fini’s “overly macho” father to her hometown of Trieste, Italy. Since Fini’s father repeatedly hired kidnappers to abduct his daughter and bring her to Argentina, her mother disguised Fini as a boy until she reached puberty. After many failed attempts to retrieve his daughter, Fini’s father finally gave up and had minimal, if any, contact with her for the rest of his life.
Perhaps the unusual circumstances of Fini’s early life contributed to her development into a fiercely independent young woman. Fini, who rebelled against formal education, taught herself to draw and paint through self-discipline and perseverance. She learned anatomy by making detailed drawings of corpses that she found in Trieste morgues.
The intricate sketches of Fini’s youth later developed into increasingly simpler and more gestural drawings, usually of women. Shortly after her first exhibition in Milan at the age of seventeen, she moved to Paris, where she remained for the rest of her life.
Most of Fini’s paintings are infused with a sensuality that is both beautiful and ominous. The oil painting Le Lac (1991), for example, depicts busts of women with full, rounded breasts submerged in water. The hair on top of their heads forms phallic-like structures. The women glow ghostly white, an effect that is enhanced by their ambiguous, lush, and dark environment. These incredible beings dominate their surroundings and seem to function as icons of female sexuality.
The oil painting The Ends of the Earth (1949) features a single nude woman who is immersed in dark liquid from the breasts down. Around her float animal skulls said by the artist to represent the extinct male race, which she thought was too brutal and cruel to survive. Like Le Lac, The Ends of the Earth is a stark, haunting image that presents woman as an icon.
The Ends of the Earth illustrates Fini’s refusal to accept the world as defined by men and her consequent creation of a pictorial world defined by female desires. Although erotic connotations infuse her works, the female body is never objectified; the women Fini creates are always powerful and self-possessed.
The lithograph Armine (1976), for example, features a nude male figure in profile literally chewing his fingers in desire as he gazes at the beautiful woman who is presented frontally to the viewer. Seemingly aware of her unattainable status, the woman confronts the viewer with a full-on gaze beneath raised eyebrows.
Marcel Duchamp and Claude Cahun
Some artists who worked in the Surrealist tradition, including Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) and Claude Cahun (1894-1954), experimented with the fluidity of gender roles. Frequently understood as the creator of conceptual art, Duchamp eschewed art that appeals only to the eye in favor of art made for the mind. Ideas became the focus of his work, and androgynyandrogyny was a concept that interested him.
The combination of male and female elements in Duchamp’s art symbolizes duality and, by extension, the larger truth of non-duality–or the unity of all reality. In other words, two-ness actually is oneness when understood from a higher, perhaps surreal, level of perception.
Perhaps the best example of Duchamp’s experimentation with gender roles is the creation of his female alter ego in 1920 named Rrose Sélavy (”Eros, c’est la vie,” or “Eros, that’s life”). Works that present Duchamp as a female include Belle Haleine (Beautiful Breath, 1921), a perfume bottle with a photograph of Rrose taken by Man Ray. In addition to appearing in various works of art, Rrose “signed” a number of them, as well as most of Duchamp’s literary works, between 1920 and 1940.
Duchamp, a heterosexual, intended Rrose to be amusing, but he also wanted to propagate androgyny as a concept to ponder seriously. The artist also experimented with androgyny outside of his alter ego. In 1938, for example, Duchamp presented a female mannequin half dressed in his own male clothing for the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Paris. The torso, chest, and arms of the figure wore a suit while the pelvis, legs, and feet remained alarmingly bare.
A contemporary of Duchamp, the French lesbian artist born Lucy Schwob lived her life under the androgynous pseudonym Claude Cahun (1894-1954). Throughout her writings and photography, Cahun explored the idea that gender is a masquerade. Her photographs, which convincingly present her as either male or female, suggest that gender is a construct.
In a 1929 self-portrait, for example, Cahun wears a blond wig and heavy make-up in an obviously elaborate charade of doll-like femininity. In a 1919 self-portrait, however, Cahun looks like a male as she sits in profile.
Cahun’s photographs that present her as a mixture of male and female components are shocking, outlandish, and ingenious. In a dramatic self-portrait from 1928, Cahun is a sexy, glamorously made-up female with a scarf draped around her neck. With a twist that makes the viewer unfamiliar with Cahun’s work wonder whether the sitter is male or female, the artist wears a shirt that looks like bare skin in the black and white photograph. Since the garment makes the artist’s chest seem completely flat, the two nipples painted onto the fabric look male.
In another thought-provoking self-portrait from 1928, the artist, with characteristically cropped hair, presents herself as an androgynous being with her left cheek next to a mirror. Most intriguing is the fact that the unaltered mirror reflection of the artist, presented within the same image, highlights the fact that the human face is not bilaterally symmetrical.
With this photograph, Cahun suggests that the existence of “two faces” within a single individual has gender implications. She holds the jacket she is wearing to her neck with her right hand, concealing her neck from the viewer. In the mirror reflection, she appears to hold the collar open with her left hand. Thus, Cahun is able to contrast her feminine neckline, or a more feminine version of herself, with a more masculine portrayal. Within a single image, then, the artist reveals that neither identity nor the perception of identity are fixed or stable.
Cahun’s photographs challenge the notion of two distinct, polar opposite genders, and they do so in an unabashed manner. In almost every self-portrait, Cahun gazes directly, unapologetically at the viewer.
While Cahun was alive, her questioning of gender roles did not end with her art works. In everyday life, Cahun dressed alternately as a male or a female and sometimes as a combination of both. She was known to make grand entrances wearing the suit of a man, monocle over one eye, on the arm of her life-long companion Suzanne Malherbe.
Hannah Höch
Like Cahun and Duchamp, the German artist Hannah Höch (1889-1978) also experimented with androgyny in her artistic production. While Cahun created seamless, believable images, however, Höch worked with the collage, frequently emphasizing its constructedness.
Affiliated with the Dada movement, Höch’s works are characteristically nonsensical; Dada artists frequently poked fun at the art world. The very nature of the collage, made from pre-existing, or found, materials, challenges the definition of art as an original creative production.
In the photomontage (collage of photographs) titled Dompteuse (Tamer, ca 1930), Höch leaves the ripped edges of the photographs exposed to reinforce the point that the fantastical being created in the work is constructed. This seated, slim-bodied figure wears a woman’s skirt and shirt, sports hairy, muscular arms, and possesses a demure, black and white face of a mannequin (the rest of the photograph is in color).
By combining stereotypical male and female imagery, Höch forces the viewer to consider what characterizes specific gender traits, and perhaps also why. Dompteuse could also be viewed as a joke about which combination of qualities constitutes a “third sex” since some theorists at the time ascribed bisexuality to a visible, physical combination of masculine and feminine attributes. This investigation may have been of particular interest to Höch since she was bisexual.
Höch sometimes addresses the objectification of women in her work. In the photomontage Marlene, for example, two male viewers gaze at a pair of gigantic legs adorned with stockings and high heels that are mounted upside down on a pedestal.
This image is not a simple illustration of male desire for the female form, however. The bright red mouth positioned in the upper right hand corner is outside of the males’ sight lines, and so is presented to the viewer, whether male or female, as an object of desire.
Adding another layer to the work, the name “Marlene” is scribbled across the center of the image. This is probably an allusion to Marlene Dietrich, an actress well known for her androgynous image and her ambiguous sexual identity.
Keith Vaughan
Different in style and in content from Dada and Surrealist works is the art of the openly gay British painter Keith Vaughan (1912-1977). Untaught as an artist, though tutored at Christ’s Hospital in London, Vaughan developed his skill through unrelenting practice.
From his early twenties until the end of his life, taken through a suicide that resulted from Vaughan’s struggle with cancer, the artist portrayed the male form within the landscape. As his works demonstrate, he conceptualized man as integrated into nature.
The oil painting Head with Raised Arm (1948) features a blocky torso and head surrounded by patches of color. The repetition of forms and tones creates an ambiguity between figure and ground. The male figure, in fact, is so much a part of the surroundings that his body seems to become part of the landscape, with only the mouth and an ear fully articulated.
Vaughan’s mixed media work Ochre Figure (1952) features a sinewy, linear male form that, like the figure in Head with Raised Arm, blends into its surroundings. The face, sketchily articulated, is set into a small head that ultimately functions as a design element.
As Vaughan’s career progressed, his work became more abstract. In the 1963 oil painting Group of Dinkas, for example, the artist uses a minimum of brushstrokes to suggest three human forms.
Francis Bacon
Widely recognized as Britain’s most important twentieth-century painter, Francis Bacon (1909-1996) is best known for his elegantly composed works featuring ugly and disturbing subject matter, especially crucifixions, screaming faces, and beaten bodies. His work has been seen as reflecting the violence and trauma that has characterized twentieth-century Europe, but it also reflects the artist’s interest in gay male sadomasochism.
Although Bacon was openly gay and his work presents uncensored radical sexuality, he has nevertheless enjoyed wide praise from mainstream critics. Even works such as Two Figures (1953), which depicts male-male rape, have been acclaimed for their symbolic significance and beauty of composition.
Indebted to the old masters, but strongly influenced by modern psychological insights and awareness, Bacon produces deeply disturbing works that nevertheless appeal even as they repel. What has not been sufficiently recognized by mainstream critics is the autobiographical roots of Bacon’s paintings, especially its origins in his psychosexual make-up.
David Hockney
Another openly gay British artist, David Hockney (b. 1937) sometimes treats the male form in a funky, even whimsical manner. Hockney developed a distinct style during his studies at the Royal College of Art in London in the late 1950s. Representational but deliberately naïve, his style was influenced by both abstract art and children’s drawings.
Hockney has deemed a work that dates from this early period, We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961), propaganda for homosexuality. In the painting, two scribbled, simplistic, human forms embrace and kiss one another. Alluding to the poem by Walt Whitman, the artist incorporated the words “we two boys together clinging” into the composition.
Hockney moved to Los Angeles in 1964, perhaps in part drawn by California’s more relaxed attitude toward homosexuality. In Los Angeles, blue skies, swimming pools, and homoerotichomoerotic images of tanned young men became the most common themes of his increasingly naturalistic work. The voyeuristic Man Taking Shower in Beverly Hills (1964), for example, features a nude male seen from the side bending over in the shower.
Rotimi Fani-Kayode
Toward the end of the twentieth century, many artists working in Europe reflected the increasing internationalization of the art world. For example, the Nigerian-born photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955-1989) moved to London during his adolescence. His work is at once African and European.
One of Fani-Kayode’s goals was to use art to undermine the Western world’s misperception and misrepresentation of black Africans. His photographs of nude or semi-nude black males frequently blend African and Western iconography with sexual, sometimes homoerotic, themes. They present an alternate reality, transporting the viewer into unfamiliar worlds that encourage a reconsideration of commonly held ideas and assumptions about racial and sexual identity.
The black and white photograph entitled White Bouquet (1987) is a reinterpretation of Edouard Manet’s famous painting Olympia (1863). It depicts a white man presenting a bouquet of flowers to a black male lounging on a chaise. Both nude figures turn their backs to the viewer. In Manet’s work, a clothed black female servant gives flowers to a nude white female prostitute, and both women face the viewer.
White Bouquet’s gender and racial reversal is echoed in its compositional inversion; even the presenter of the flowers is on the opposite side than that in Olympia. This undoing of the familiar results in an ambiguous image left open to many complex interpretations.
Conclusion
Many European artists explored gender-related and homosexual themes during the twentieth century. The breadth of this output is immense and continues to influence artists working today. The figures mentioned above were chosen not only because of their distinctive achievements, but also because their interests are both representative and diverse.

Christian Denominations

admin — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:49:57 +0000

While Christian denominations such as the Metropolitan Community Church and the Unitarian Universalists welcome full participation by glbtq members and clergy, others are divided over glbtq issues, and some are ardent supporters of the most homophobic elements of the New Right.

Churches of the Anglican Communion include the Episcopal Church and the Church of England. The recent consecration of Reverend V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as a bishop in the United States brought tensions within the worldwide communion into sharp focus.

The Bible is the foundational text of Christianity. Perhaps no other book has been more influential–for better or worse–in determining the construction of gay and lesbian identity in the modern world, as well as social attitudes toward homosexuality.

The core of Evangelical Christianity is its emphasis on convincing non-Christians to join the Christian faith. Evangelicalism is closely related to fundamentalism and tends to be both socially conservative and hostile to glbtq people and sensibilities.

A number of specifically gay-oriented churches and synagogues that address the needs of gay and lesbian believers emerged in the 1960s in response to the gay liberation movement.

The Metropolitan Community Church was founded by Rev. Troy D. Perry in 1968 to minister to the glbtq community. Today, the denomination has more than 40,000 members in 300 churches in 18 countries.

Rev. Troy D. Perry (b. 1940) was twice defrocked as a Pentecostal preacher before he founded the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches. A charismatic minister and leader, Perry has built the religious organization into one of the fastest growing denominations in the world.

The Christian group known as the Quakers is officially known as The Society of Friends. The Society of Friends, especially its conservative branch, has been a leader among Christian religious denominations in accepting homosexuality and gay and lesbian identity.

The Roman Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination in the Western world. It may be the institution most responsible for the suffering of individuals involved in same-sex sexual relationships.

The Salvation Army is a conservative Evangelical sect widely known for its social services programs and thrift stores. In a recent scandal, an attempt by the group to make a secret deal with the Bush administration was exposed. It offered political support in exchange for legal exemptions that would allow it to openly discriminate against members of the GLBT community.

The Southern Baptists have become the most intolerant of the major American religious denominations, especially (but not exclusively) for their opposition to equal rights for gay men and lesbians.

The Unitarian Universalist church in the United States has been outspoken in support of human rights–including, since 1970, those of the glbtq community. The denomination endorsed legally recognized same-sex marriage in 1996.

The United Church of Christ is an American Protestant denomination that approaches scripture in a spirit of inquiry rather than literalism. The church has attempted to make its congregations a “place of extravagant welcome” for glbtq people.

Privacy Policy

admin — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:45:32 +0000

We at glbtq, Inc. (”glbtq”) value the privacy of our visitors and members. Therefore, keeping your personal information secure and using it to ensure that you get the very best service are top priorities at glbtq.com. This privacy policy defines the ways we collect and use information provided by visitors and members. By accessing, browsing, and/or using our Web site, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by this Privacy Policy in conjunction with this site’s Terms of Service.

Where Information is Stored

All personal information we collect is stored on a password-protected section of our Web server. Our Web server is located in a locked, limited access data center.

What We Collect

• Membership Information and Private Messages

Prospective glbtq members are asked to create a member profile by completing a form at registration. The profile allows members to choose to allow other members to view some of the information in their profiles and allows members to enter information they wish to make public. If you chose to make elements such as your e-mail address or ICQ number public, all site members and visitors will be able to view those elements. If not, only you and authorized glbtq staff may view your profile.

glbtq does not share member profiles with business partners or advertisers. If issues arise that affect a specific member, glbtq staff may use the e-mail address in that member’s profile to communicate with the member.

One of the options in the User Profile is to turn on personal messages. If you elect to turn on personal messages, you may send messages to and receive messages from other members. These messages are stored on glbtq’s Web server. Unless we need to access these messages for legal, safety, or technical reasons, or in a manner consistent with this Privacy Policy, we do not read members’ personal messages.

Members may also elect to have themselves automatically logged in by glbtq’s servers. If you select automatic login or “remember my password,” a persistent cookie will be set on your computer that identifies you to glbtq’s server. glbtq’s server does not use this cookie to track your behavior on the site and we do not share it with business partners or advertisers. A “cookie” is a small text file that does not personally identify users, although it does identify a user’s computer. “Cookies” do not pose a threat to your computer, and they do not contain viruses. Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can change this feature in your browser.

You may update your profile or cancel your membership at any time by selecting the appropriate choice in the login menu.

• Web Logs

Like most Web sites, www.glbtq.com maintains Web logs that record the IP addresses and other information about all site visitors, but do not provide personally identifying information. This information is used in aggregate to help us develop new site features, to assess the demographics of the community that visits glbtq.com, and to tabulate traffic statistics. We share aggregate Web log data with advertisers and other business partners. We make no effort to associate individually identifying information with data contained in our Web logs and we do not share IP addresses with advertisers or business partners.

• Newsletter Subscription

Site members and visitors may subscribe to glbtq’s newsletters. Newsletters are sent via broadcast e-mail to subscribers. The e-mail address provided in your request for a newsletter subscription is used only for distributing the newsletter. glbtq does not share the newsletter mailing list with advertisers or business partners.

You may unsubscribe by entering your e-mail address in the newsletter subscription box on glbtq’s home page and clicking on the unsubscribe link or by following the unsubscribe link included in each newsletter e-mail.

• Marketing Surveys

From time to time, glbtq conducts online marketing surveys. Information provided by members and visitors in the surveys is used to compile aggregate statistics about site visitors, such as visitor demographics, interests, and purchasing habits. We share these aggregate statistics with advertisers and business partners. glbtq makes no effort to associate individually identifying information with data collected in marketing surveys.

• Ad Server

glbtq places advertisements on its Web site using its own ad server and does not contract with any third parties for ad serving. We encourage you to visit our advertisers’ Web sites, though those sites are not bound by glbtq’s privacy policy. To ascertain the privacy practices of our advertisers, please read their individual privacy policies (see the “Privacy Practices of Other Web Sites” Section of this Privacy Policy).

glbtq’s ad server uses cookies to rotate advertisements on its pages so that you see a variety of advertisements rather than a single one repeatedly. glbtq does not associate these cookies with any individually identifying information.

Advertisers may set a cookie to control their own ad rotations. glbtq does not carry advertising from sources that use cookies to identify visitors.

• Tell A Friend

glbtq provides a Tell-a-Friend feature that permits site visitors to send e-mail messages to others. You may opt out from receiving any additional messages by clicking on the Tell-A-Friend “opt out” link at the bottom of every message the Tell-A-Friend system sends.

glbtq stores the e-mail addresses and any visitor messages supplied in the Tell-A-Friend entry page and uses this information to track any abuses of the Tell-A-Friend system. glbtq does not share this information with advertisers or business partners. glbtq uses this information to assess the popularity of individual entries in the glbtq encyclopedia, and shares its assessments with business partners and advertisers.

• Discussion Boards

glbtq.com features discussion boards designed to support communities interested in specific topics. Messages posted on the discussion boards are visible to both glbtq members and to visitors at-large. Only members may post messages, but those who post messages should bear in mind that any information posted in a discussion board message is visible to the general public. Please refer to this site’s Terms of Service for additional terms related to use of discussion boards.

The discussion boards use cookies to maintain your discussion board session. glbtq does not use these cookies to track your individual behavior on the Web site. The discussion board records the ip address of the poster of each message. When necessary, glbtq uses the recorded ip address to identify site members who post inappropriate messages. This information is not shared with advertisers or business partners.

• Information Disclosure

If we believe that the site’s facilities have been used illegally, to foster illegal activity, to damage the site, or to subvert the site’s security features, we reserve the right but do not have the obligation to contact and cooperate with law enforcement authorities and to disclose to them any information we collect that is relevant to such activity.

We reserve the right, but do not have the obligation, to disclose any information we collect if, in our sole discretion, we believe that such disclosure will protect the rights or property of the site, glbtq, Inc. (the company that owns the site), the health or safety of the public or site members, or if such information is requested from us in connection with a court order or legal proceeding.

glbtq reserves the right to transfer information as part of a corporate reorganization, consolidation, merger, or the sale or transfer of substantially all of its assets.

glbtq will also disclose personal information when required by law or in the good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with other purposes that glbtq believes to serve a legitimate purpose.

• Contact Information

glbtq’s About section includes a contact information page that allows you to contact glbtq. Though we cannot respond to every message we receive, if we do so, we may respond using the e-mail address or the mailing address you supply in your correspondence with us.

• Children Under the Age of 13

We make a good faith effort to prevent children under the age of 13 from becoming site members. The site does not knowingly collect or store information from children under the age of 13. Information that is inadvertently collected from children will be deleted as soon as it is recognized as such.

Your Password and Account Information

You are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your password and/or account related information.

DISCLAIMERS

WHILE GLBTQ HAS SAFEGUARDS IN PLACE TO PREVENT UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS OR INTERCEPTION, THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE GUARANTEE OF SECURITY. IN THE EVENT OF AN INTERCEPTION OR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS, GLBTQ SHALL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR SUCH INTERCEPTION OR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS, OR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING LOST PROFITS) SUFFERED BY A VISITOR OR MEMBER, EVEN IF GLBTQ HAS PREVIOUSLY BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. GLBTQ DOES NOT WARRANT, EITHER EXPRESSLY OR IMPLIEDLY, THAT THE INFORMATION PROVIDED BY ANY VISITOR OR MEMBER SHALL BE FREE FROM INTERCEPTION OR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS, AND DOES NOT PROVIDE ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

IN TRANSMITTING ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS TO GLBTQ, THE VISITOR OR MEMBER OF THIS WEB SITE IS REQUESTING THAT GLBTQ SEND INFORMATION TO OR CONTACT THE VISITOR OR MEMBER REGARDING OUR PRODUCTS AND/OR SERVICES. GLBTQ WILL MAKE EVERY EFFORT TO ACCOMMODATE REASONABLE REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION PERTAINING TO OUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES IN A TIMELY MANNER BUT MAKES NO GUARANTEES FOR THE TIMELINESS OF SUCH RESPONSES. THE VISITOR OR MEMBER SHOULD BE AWARE THAT GLBTQ IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR DELAY, NON-DELIVERY, OR NON-RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION EXCHANGED BETWEEN GLBTQ AND THE VISITOR OR MEMBER OR VICE-VERSA DUE TO INTERNET CONNECTIVITY PROBLEMS, MAN-MADE OR NATURAL DISASTERS, FORCE MAJEURE, COMPUTER MALFUNCTIONS, OR INCORRECT CONTACT INFORMATION SUPPLIED BY THE VISITOR OR MEMBER.

Privacy Practices of Other Web Sites

This Web site may contain links to other Web sites. When you use a link to go from this Web site to another Web site, the glbtq.com Terms of Service and this Privacy Policy are no longer in effect. Your browsing and interaction on any other Web site, including sites that have a link on or to glbtq.com, are subject to the privacy policy of that site. Be sure to read over that privacy policy before proceeding, as glbtq is not responsible for the privacy practices of such Web sites.

Notification of Changes

We reserve the right, at any time and without notice, to add to, change, update, or modify this Privacy Policy, simply by posting such change, update, or modification on our Web site. Any such change, update, or modification will be effective immediately upon posting on the Web site. If we make any changes in this Privacy Policy, we will post a message on the site’s home page and on this page. If the change in policy affects the way we use existing member information, members will be provided with a mechanism to opt-out of the changes.

Your Information

If you give glbtq your contact information over this Web site, and you wish to amend that information or have your name removed from glbtq’s database, please send e-mail to privacy@glbtq.com.

Privacy Concerns

If you believe that we have failed to comply with this policy in any way, or if you have any questions about privacy on this site, please contact us by e-mail at privacy@glbtq.com or by mail at the address listed below. In your letter, please describe in as much detail as possible the ways in which you believe that glbtq has not complied with this policy. We will investigate your concern promptly.

Board of Editorial Consultants

admin — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:37:20 +0000

Tee A. Corinne

The late Tee A. Corinne’s articles about lesbian art and artists appeared in Lesbian Histories and Cultures, Women Artists of the American West, n. paradoxa, The Journal of Lesbian Studies, The Lesbian Review of Books, The Blatant Image: A Magazine of Feminist Photography, Lambda Book Report, and Sinister Wisdom. Her books include The Cunt Coloring Book (1975), Yantras of Woman Love (1982), Dreams of the Woman Who Loved Sex (1987 and 1999), and Courting Pleasure (1994). She was the editor of FABB: The Feminist Art Books Bulletin.

Gregory A. Johnson

Gregory A. Johnson is an Associate Professor at Vermont Law School, where he teaches courses in Constitutional Law, Apellate Advocacy, and Sexual Orientation and the Law. He served as co-counsel on Brause v. Bureau of Vital Statistics, Alaska’s groundbreaking same-sex marriage case. Johnson has lectured across the country on same-sex marriage and other issues related to sexual orientation and the law. His publications include Vermont Civil Unions: The New Language of Marriage, and Making History in Vermont.

Mark McLelland

Mark McLelland is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland where he researches and writes about sexuality and the media in Japan. He is the author of Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Cultural Myths and Social Realities and is the Editor of Japanese Cybercultures.

Thomas L. Riis

Thomas L. Riis is Director of the American Music Research Center and is a Professor of Music in the School of Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder. A specialist in American musical theater, Professor Riis’s interests are wide-ranging and include medieval song, historical performance practice, and African-American music.

Patricia Simons

Patricia Simons is an Associate Professor of the History of Art and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. Her scholarly interests include the art of Renaissance Italy, with a special focus on the representation of gender and sexuality, and interdisciplinary research on the construction of authority and identity.

Patricia Juliana Smith

Patricia Juliana Smith is Assistant Professor of English at Hofstra University and a prolific author and editor. Her books include en Travesti: Women, Gender, Subversion, Opera; The Queer Sixties; and The Gay and Lesbian Book of Quotations

Abbott, Berenice (1898-1991)

admin — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:23:46 +0000

Accomplished American photographer Berenice Abbott may be best known for her photographs of New York City’s changing cityscape, but she also made memorable images of lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men in Paris in the 1920s and in New York from the 1930s through 1965.

Born in Springfield, Ohio in 1898, Abbott briefly attended Ohio State University before moving to New York City in 1918. In New York, she lived in a semi-communal Greenwich Village apartment shared by Djuna Barnes and others. Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp were part of her social circle.

In 1921, Abbott moved to Europe where she studied sculpture in Paris and Berlin. Among her lovers in Paris were artists’ model Tylia Perlmutter and sculptress and silverpoint artist Thelma Wood. In Paris, between 1923 and 1925, she studied photography while working as Man Ray’s assistant. In 1926, she opened her own portrait studio and had a successful one-person exhibition. Two years later, she showed photographs at the Salon des Indépendants.

During Abbott’s Paris years, she photographed many figures from the worlds of literature and the arts, including James Joyce, Foujita, Coco Chanel, and Max Ernst. However, her most significant contribution to queer history and aesthetics are her vivid portraits of lesbians and bisexuals. Among these are the younger expatriate lesbian writers Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, Sylvia Beach, Bryher, Janet Flanner and Flanner’s lover Solita Solano, as well as the artist Gwen Le Gallienne, with whom she frequented gay bars.

Another of Abbott’s most memorable images is that of a masculine-appearing Thelma Wood, made after she and Abbott were no longer lovers. Abbott also photographed Wood’s new love, Djuna Barnes, whose affair with Wood was the inspiration for the novel Nightwood (1936). Unlike her image of Wood, Abbott’s photograph of her lover, Tylia Perlmutter, is delicate and dreamy.

Abbott also photographed the French bookstore owner Adrienne Monnier, Sylvia Beach’s lover; the wealthy Violette Murat (Princess Eugène Murat); and artist Marie Laurencin, a bisexual who may have had an affair with Murat. Abbott made images as well of such gay or bisexual men as André Gide, Robert McAlmon, and the flamboyant Jean Cocteau. Abbott’s bisexual Paris clients also included painters Margaret Sargent and Betty Parsons (later of the Betty Parsons Gallery in Manhattan) and architect/designer Eileen Gray.

Returning to New York City in 1929, Abbott photographed the rapidly changing city. She also photographed U.S. Highway 1 from Maine to Florida and created images to illustrate the laws and processes of physics. But she also continued making images of lesbian and bisexual women. In particular, she photographed such subjects as poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, Harlem Renaissance art patron A’Lelia Walker, and actress/director Eva Le Gallienne, Gwen’s step-sister.

In New York, Abbott formed an alliance with critic Elizabeth McCausland, which lasted from the early 1930s until McCausland’s death in 1965. Abbott’s portraits of McCausland confirm the aptness of the nickname she gave her lover, “Butchy.” McCausland wrote early essays about Abbott’s work.

Having almost flaunted her love of women early in her life, Abbott later obscured and even lied about her lesbianism, distancing and closeting herself as thoroughly as possible. In 1968, she moved permanently to Maine.

Had her lovers been male and her lesbian and bisexual subjects been heterosexual, Abbott’s work–given its quality and the accomplishments of her subjects–would have achieved earlier and greater recognition. Still, her work brought her fame and financial security. Her images of blatantly lesbian-appearing women, such as Jane Heap, for example, have been exhibited in art galleries and museums for decades. As the story of her life and the lives of her subjects become better known, her role in creating memorable images of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people finds greater appreciation.

Achtenberg, Roberta (b. 1950)

admin — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:22:22 +0000

Once Cuomo decided not to run, Achtenberg launched herself enthusiastically into the Clinton campaign, helping to organize fund-raisers and other events.

Achtenberg was a member of the committee drafting the Democratic Party’s platform, and she addressed the national convention in defense of the document. In introducing herself to the delegates, she proudly identified herself as a lesbian, a mother, and a Jew.

Nomination to HUD and the Confirmation Fight

As President-elect Clinton assembled his cabinet, he invited Achtenberg to be Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. Achtenberg would be the first openly gay person to receive Senate confirmation for an administration post.

The process was long and grueling. Conservative Christian groups lobbied against her, and a number of conservative Senators attempted to block her appointment.

Senator Jesse Helms spearheaded the opposition, making numerous public comments against Achtenberg, whom he described as a “damn lesbian,” an “intolerant radical,” and a “mean person” who “tried to bully the Boy Scouts.” Immediately before the vote on confirmation Helms warned Achtenberg’s supporters that “if any member of this Senate thinks this vote will go unnoticed by their constituents back home, they may find out otherwise” when they ran for reelection.

Achtenberg and the Boy Scouts of America

The Senate debate included many allusions to what opponents called Achtenberg’s “vendetta” against the Boy Scouts, prompting San Francisco Chronicle reporter April Lynch to write, “The Boy Scouts issue was brought up so often that some tourists sitting in the Senate visitors gallery became confused as to whether they were hearing debate on the Scouts or a HUD nomination.”

Achtenberg had been one of over fifty members of the board of directors of the United Way in San Francisco who voted unanimously not to give funds to the Boy Scouts because of their discriminatory policy against gay and bisexual boys.

The Christian Action Network sent all Senators a tape of Achtenberg and Morgan riding in the 1992 Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco. The clip included a brief embrace by the couple. Helms referred to this as evidence of Achtenberg’s “insane assault on family values” and castigated her for “demanding that society accept as normal a lifestyle that most of the world’s major religions consider immoral and which the average American voter instinctively finds repulsive.”

The much-admired Senator Claiborne Pell was among those to speak in support of Achtenberg’s confirmation, urging colleagues to use “simple standards of fairness and equal treatment” when considering the nominee. In the course of his remarks he also mentioned that his daughter, Julia Pell, was a lesbian and that he would not want her “barred from a government job because of her orientation.”

Confirmation

After Achtenberg’s testimony before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and the vigorous efforts of her proponents, especially Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California and Donald Riegle of Michigan, the full Senate confirmed her nomination by a vote of 58 to 31.

To keep the family together, Morgan resigned her judgeship in California and moved to Washington, D.C. with Achtenberg and their son.

Achievements at HUD

As Assistant Secretary at HUD, Achtenberg worked on such issues as fairness in mortgage lending and home insurance, and on finding housing for thousands of low-income citizens displaced by the 1994 earthquake in California.

Among her proudest achievements was the integration of previously all-white Vidor, Texas. With HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, Achtenberg developed a public housing project for the city and worked with community leaders to ensure successful and peaceful integration despite the opposition of the Ku Klux Klan. When construction was complete, Achtenberg went to Vidor and helped the new tenants move in.

Return to California

Achtenberg left HUD in 1995 to run in the primary for mayor of San Francisco. Given little chance at the outset, she gained considerable support but eventually lost by a narrow margin.

She briefly went back to Washington to serve as a Senior Advisor to Cisneros, but in 1996 she and her family returned to California. Achtenberg accepted a position with the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, where she is currently Senior Vice President for Public Policy. Morgan is now in private legal practice.

Honors

For her commitment to gay and lesbian rights, Achtenberg has received a GLAAD Visibility Award and a Founders Award from the National Center for Lesbian Rights, among other honors.

She was also named one of the “50 Most Influential Businesswomen in the Bay Area” in 1997.

Achmat, Zackie (b. 1962)

admin — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:18:13 +0000

South African activist Zackie Achmat has been a pivotal figure in his country’s response to AIDS. His refusal, from 1999 to 2003, to avail himself of anti-retroviral drugs until they became affordable for the poor brought him recognition from health and human rights advocates worldwide.

Born Abdurrazack Achmat in Johannesburg, on March 21, 1962, “Zackie” was raised in a conservative Muslim household by his mother and aunt in Salt River, an area of Cape Town. In a 1995 autobiographical essay, provocatively entitled “My Childhood as an Adult Molester,” he describes the conditions of life for South Africa’s “coloureds” during the apartheid era, when he suffered discrimination and poverty. Although of Malaysian extraction, he identified with the country’s black population, who were subject to even worse treatment. The essay also offers a rare portrait of gay male life in the colored community.

By age ten, Achmat was aware of his homosexuality and began to question religious teachings. An eager reader, he soon exhausted the limited offerings of the bookmobile that served his neighborhood and received a special pass to use a town library ordinarily reserved for whites. However, its restrooms were still off limits. While seeking available facilities, he discovered restroom sex with adult men and took up the life of a “moffie,” South African slang for a gay man.

Achmat’s political activism began with the 1976 student uprisings against apartheid. He organized youth resistance groups for the African National Congress (ANC) while it was still banned, and he was jailed several times. In the 1990s apartheid was repealed and a new constitution initiated. The ANC came to power under the charismatic leadership of Nelson Mandela in 1994.

Achmat was one of the founders of the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality in 1994, which advocated for gay rights in the new constitution. After considerable debate, in 1996 South Africa became the first nation to include protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in its Bill of Rights. In 1998 all remaining local sodomy laws were declared unconstitutional.

Achmat co-founded the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in 1998 to address the AIDS epidemic. South Africa then had the highest number of AIDS cases in the world, a figure that would eventually grow to over 5 million. To put a human face on the crisis, Achmat publicly announced his own HIV-positive status and vowed not to take anti-retroviral drugs until they were available to all South Africans.

As he later told his group, “The majority of people with HIV–they don’t have a face, they don’t have a political understanding. They’re desperate, they’re poor, they’re alone. . . . I can’t look them in the eye when I take medicines and I know they’re going to die.”

TAC’s first campaign was directed against drug industry pricing practices. TAC joined the government’s defense against a lawsuit brought by pharmaceutical firms to block importation of generic medicines. Through rallies and international media activism the group advocated vociferously for affordable drugs. Achmat even shipped enough AIDS drugs from Thailand to treat 700 sufferers, to make the point that generics were available at a fraction of the quoted cost. Facing a public relations disaster, in 2001 the pharmaceutical companies dropped the suit.

Now TAC faced a more prolonged struggle against its own government to make anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) available in the public health sector. Thabo Mbeke, who had succeeded Nelson Mandela as president in 1999, refused to accept the link between HIV and AIDS and pronounced ARVs “harmful to health.”

Enduring frequent bouts of illness, Achmat spearheaded TAC’s civil disobedience campaign to force the government to promote the use of ARVs. TAC and other groups sued the government to provide Nevirapine to curb mother-to-newborn transmission of HIV. TAC won the support of former president Mandela, who met with Achmat and declared him a national hero. In August 2003, anticipating a victory, Achmat resumed treatment in time to reverse his declining health. In November, South Africa’s Ministry of Health finally agreed to a government-funded program to provide ARVs on a wide scale.

Although there have been other obstacles to effective treatment for HIV infection in South Africa, TAC has made steady progress. In addition to his work with TAC, Achmat has also directed the AIDS Law Project at University of Witwatersrand and co-founded ABIGALE (Association of Bisexuals, Gays, and Lesbians).

A filmmaker, he has also directed several documentary films: Scorpion under a Stone (1996, about the Afrikaans language); Gay Life Is Best (1993, on the 1992 Johannesburg Pride March); Die Duiwel Maak My Hart So Seer (1993, interviews with poor children); and Apostles of Civilised Vice (2000, on South Africa’s gay history).

Brian Tilley’s documentary It’s My Life offers an intimate portrait of Achmat’s activism during the time of his medication strike.

Achmat received the Desmond Tutu Leadership Award in 2001; the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights in 2003; and the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights in 2003. In 2004, he was one of the nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize.