To Be, or Not to Be, in Bhutan
ON MY FIRST VISIT to Bhutan in 2007, one of the participants on our trip asked our guide Dorji about gay people in Bhutan. Dorji’s straight-faced reply was…More
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On the Road with Allen Ginsberg
MARGARET ATWOOD said in a 1995 lecture: “If you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography—but if you write…More
In the Age of the Gay Memoir
AN HOUR BEFORE I was due there, I was surprised to read on my calendar that I was part of a reading group at the Huntington Library in San…More
Working Out
IN HIS NEW HISTORY of the gymnasium, Eric Chaline writes that one reason people go to gyms as adults is that they enjoyed physical activity when they were young, though I’ve always suspected that for gay male gym-goers the reverse is often the case.
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How ‘Sex’ Undid John Money
John Money (1921-2006) is the subject of the two books under review here: Terry Goldie’s The Man Who Invented Gender: Engaging the Ideas of John Money and Fuckology: Critical Essays on John Money’s Diagnostic Concepts.
MoreThe Lure of the Gay Gene
THE FOLLOWING WORDS were published anonymously ten years ago in a pamphlet titled “The Gay Gene Will Not Protect You,” by a group of queer activists in New York…More
In With the Worldly Set
DAVID PLANTE is an Anglo-American writer who is perhaps best known for a trilogy of autobiographical novels—The Family, The Wood, and The Country—that were joined together in a 1983…More
‘Homonormativity’ and Its Discontents
WE ARE LEAVING the city behind in the dream. We are lying upon the edge of a pool on a cliff overlooking the ocean. In Mexico, the city is…More
Gay Advertising Goes Mainstream: Now What?
POLITICS AND POP CULTURE have always played off each other in advertising, and nowhere has that link been more clear than in gay-targeted ads. Over the past four…More
Cuba: How Real Is the Thaw?
THERE WERE three of them. The one on the left was a macho boy, all muscles and cool hair. On the right, linking arms with him, was a petite, girly…More