|
|
Assimilation & Postcolonialism
|
|
|
 The
Rise and Fall of Gay Culture by Daniel Harris
Daniel Harris comes on strong: "For far too
long, the book trade has provided gay readers with nothing more
than the literary equivalent of a warm glow, a soothing linguistic
salve for the walking wounded, as if we were all still 13 and were
all still mustering the courage to come out, as if, after 25 years
of gay liberation, we all still needed to be scolded and cajoled
into self-acceptance.... Homosexuals are not permanent
intellectual convalescents. They are thriving, mentally, if not
physically, and it is time that they remove their bandages, raise
themselves off of the soft, snug, and commodious bed of uplifting
ideology in which they have slept for decades, and face some
important truths about a culture desperately in need of being
shaken out of its complacency."
Harris musters an impressive body of evidence to
show how many of the elements of gay culture are rooted not in a
"psychological fetish" for, say, Bette Davis movies or
shiny leather boots, but in a "social fetish"; gay men,
in other words, bonded together over Hollywood divas and kinky sex
because it's something they could do together that set them apart
from their heterosexual peers. But as society becomes increasingly
more tolerant of queerness, Harris argues, gay men feel less need
to be culturally unique. And their culture slowly disappears into
the mainstream. With its analyses of the deterioration of camp's
hold over the gay community, the evolution of drag queens and
leathermen, and the kitschy commodification of AIDS, The
Rise and Fall of Gay Culture quickly became one of
the most controversial gay-themed nonfiction works of the '90s
when it was first published. It remains as provocative today. --Ron
Hogan
|
|
Straight Answers Online is a site about changing
the terms of debate over sexual orientation and ending the
conflict over gay issues. This web site is a companion for a book
in progress by the same name. The site provides preview chapters
from the book, as well as material that will only be available
online, such as advice on how to answer common questions about gay
life.
Most advice about coming out and explaining gay
life to other people concentrates on basic information about
sexual orientation: things like gay people are about 10 percent of
the population, homosexuality probably isn't a choice, etc. This
is necessary, but it's only half the battle. Information about gay
life has to be presented in a way that people who aren't already
on our side will understand, and we need to get inside the heads
of antigay conservatives to really understand what they're
thinking before we can change it. That's what Straight Answers is
about.
|
|
Essay By Urvashi Vaid
Excerpt:
...With the emergence in the 1990's of an out,
loud and proud South Asian queer movement, I went through a third
identity shift. Until the 1990's, I had never had an ongoing
personal connection to a network of other political, gay and
lesbian South Asians--a group of friends and colleagues with whom
to discuss the experience of our multiple identities and the
different worlds we negotiate. By reading the work of Asian
lesbians and South Asian gay men and women, I realized the depth
of my estrangement from my Indian self. And I consciously
adopted the hyphenated existence as an effort to rebuild a bridge
I had in many ways burned. I began to name myself Indian-American,
to acknowledge the duality of cultural assimilation and cultural
difference that warred inside me, to begin to face how I was not
assimilated and why I was. I began to make peace with the
traditions I had run from...
|
 |
|
