The Codpiece: Life and Times
YOU’VE ALL SEEN THEM—that pommel in the dress of Henry VIII and others—prominent, like something to rest your hand on, dependable, serviceable: the codpiece. Where did it come from and…More
Browsing: Essays
Blog Posts
The Many Genders of Old India
TRADITIONAL INDIAN CULTURE is replete with legends and mythologies where heroes and heroines have chosen various genders without guilt, and their choices have been accepted and respected by the community.…More
An English Martyr
“BASED ON A TRUE STORY” are probably the most ominous words in film, but that’s what flashes across the screen at the opening of The Imitation Game, the new biopic about the British mathematician Alan Turing.
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Grant Wood’s Glimmerglass Surprise
THE CAMPUS OF GLIMMERGLASS OPERA Festival rolls up the mountain shore near the north end of a strayed-east Finger Lake named Otsego, ten miles north of Cooperstown’s Baseball Hall of…More
In (Partial) Defense of Harry Hay
OSCAR WILDE characterized gay love as that “great affection … such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy. … It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as…More
All the Doomed Young Men
The Plaster Fabric by Martyn Goff Valancourt Books. 200 pages, $16.99 The Youngest Director by Martyn Goff Valancourt Books. 218 pages, $15.99 A Room in Chelsea Square by Michael Nelson…More
Christian Martyr, Pagan Witness
RADCLYFFE HALL’S The Well of Loneliness is the canonical lesbian novel that many people think they know; in some sense, it has become a part of queer folk culture.…More
‘Millions of Queers’: A View from 1940
RESEARCHER RANDALL SELL has uncovered a previously unknown 149-page manuscript defending homosexuality written in 1940. Allen Bernstein’s “Millions of Queers” is one of the earliest known defenses of homosexuality…More
A Single Man We Can Relate To
IN HIS MEMOIR Christopher and His Kind, Christopher Isherwood describes his relationship with E. M. Forster, who was 25 years his senior. When they met in 1932, Isherwood felt…More
The Baldwin of Giovanni’s Room
WHEN James Baldwin presented a manuscript of Giovanni’s Room to his agent, Helen Strauss, she told him to burn it. It was his second novel. His first, Go Tell…More