IN THE HISTORY of homosexuality in Victorian England, Simeon Solomon has re-emerged as a significant figure. A Jewish painter among the Pre-Raphaelites, Solomon was arrested on February 11, 1873, in a public urinal with another man and charged with attempted sodomy. …
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This article focuses on commercially produced postcards that were printed in large numbers and circulated widely throughout the world. Real photo postcards, in contrast, whether produced by professional or amateur photographers, also provide valuable insights into social history but were most often printed in limited numbers, and their images can be difficult if not impossible to identify. … The postcards reproduced here are from my personal collection, and my hope is that they will offer a flavor of the shifting sex and gender ideas of this era.
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Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson (1858-1942), although known to a few gay scholars, is not exactly a household name. This is not surprising, if only because he always hid behind a pseudonym when writing his gay-themed works. He also lied about his age and enjoyed hoodwinking an audience whenever he could. More to the point, his works are to this day not easy to find. The general outlines of his life are established, though details are hard to come by. …
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The World of Tennessee Williams Revised and Updated Edition by Richard Freeman Leavitt and Kenneth Holditch Hansen Publishing Group LLC 118 pages, $14.95 Tennessee Williams in Provincetown by David…More
CRYSTAL WAS WORRIED that she had male orgasms. So she came in to the Disorders of Sex Development (DSD) Clinic three years ago for a consultation with a phalanx of specialists: a urologist, a geneticist, an endocrinologist, and me, the psychiatric consultant.
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THE ANNALS of gay history are littered with examples of men in the public eye who have successfully hidden their gay lives from view. … Eugen Sandow was, for a short time, an exception to the rule. He was internationally known as the apotheosis of male beauty and the most perfectly formed man on the planet. Little remembered today, Sandow was the father of modern bodybuilding-and, for a short time at least, he was open about his sexuality
MorePUBLIC TOILET SIGNS are changing, and the gendering of elimination is now subject to discussion and debate. This became obvious to me when an older male professor at York University in Toronto, Canada, stared nervously at the new gender neutral sign on the bathroom door in the student center. …
MoreUnderstanding eating disorders within the gay community requires examination on multiple fronts. Personal stories need to be told. Research needs to be put into perspective. The facts need to be absorbed into the larger context of gay identity.
MoreTHE CREATION of new drugs to treat HIV/AIDS has just about run its course. The next generation of therapies will involve modulating the body’s own immune system to better control the infection, and modifying its cells to make them more resistant to continued assault by the virus. The most advanced example of this line of research was recently presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, held in Boston. It is the world’s premier meeting on HIV science.
The study involved just six patients, but it demonstrated the proof of concept that it is possible to change the DNA of a person’s CD4+T cells so that they no longer express the CCR5 molecule that the virus uses to enter cells. The modified immune cells can be put back into a patient and they appear to thrive for at least three months and counting. Just how long they might last and how well they function has yet to be determined.
MoreIN THE PERIOD of the first reports of the new syndrome of immune deficiency (1981 to 1985), before we were certain about the primary role of HIV in the epidemic, sides were taken about putative cause(s), and about what the future held for the epidemic, gay sexual life, and the gay community in general. The range of viewpoints fell into several discernible camps.
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