An Interview by Greg Rider with Michelangelo
Signorile, author of Life Outside
Excerpt:
Michelangelo Signorile's Life Outside: The
Signorile Report on Gay Men, Sex, Muscles and the Passages of Life
shatters the silence of postmodern passivity through a series of
interspersed personal viewpoints which serve to reinforce its
central theme: examining the narcissism and hedonism resplendent
in much of gay culture in late twentieth century America.
Although his examination involves AIDS and the
concomitant issues surrounding it, i.e., medicinal, therapeutic,
and recreational drug usage, body image, and safe vs. unsafe sex,
Signorile is one of several angry voicesincluding Larry Kramer,
Gabriel Rotello (Sexual Ecology), and Daniel Harris (The
Rise and Fall of Gay Culture)urging gay men and lesbians to
harness some of the Movements liberties birthed during the
Stonewall years.
According to Signorile, it is not just
complacency that plagues gay culture, but a number of symptoms
associated with what he terms the "cult of the
masculine," epitomized in the Evangelical Church of the
Circuit, a lifestyle consumed by bodybuilding and attendance at
numerous weekend-long dance parties held throughout major U.S.
cities. Unfortunately, AIDS remains at the center of this
dysfunctional paradigm of reality. Signorile criticizes these
circuit queens who indulge their adolescent compulsions,
compulsions which far too often circumvent matters of safe sex and
overall health. Its not that the parties are bad and that
well-adjusted gay men should avoid them, but rather that in the
midst of the Circuit, too much emphasis is placed on drugs and
sex, making safe sex guidelines virtually nonexistent.
But it is not just the Circuit boys who must
endure the writers criticism; it is also the AIDS service
organizations who benefit from the parties. Many party promoters
identify an AIDS service provider as a beneficiary of the party
for a number of reasons: it legitimizes the party for attendees
and sponsors; it brings in free products and services (alcohol and
hotel rooms for performers); it allows for a wide variety of
individuals to contribute to charity at one time; and it funnels
well-needed money to one of the biggest and most visible social
causes of the 1990s. But, Signorile argues, organizations that aim
to prevent, treat and educate about a disease caused by drug use
and unsafe sex should not benefit from an event at which these
behaviors occur.
In the end, we must each draw our own
conclusions about the issues that Signorile most forcefully
raises. There are some tough questions about gay living that
demand consideration from all of us, and if nothing else,
Signorile's Life Outside will provoke some kind of
response. We can only thank him for the courage and commitment to
ask the questions...
Outing
Yourself : How to Come Out As Lesbian or Gay to Your Family,
Friends, and Coworkers 
