LET ME step in as your editor to fill a lacuna that I perceive in an issue devoted to “alternative sexualities,” to wit, something on polyamory, which has been variously described as a sexual orientation, a lifestyle, and a movement.
MoreWhat my colleagues and I are addressing in our research and practice are what can be seen as alternative sexualities that go beyond the standard monosexualities of homo- and heterosexual, i.e., the romantic and/or sexual attraction to one sex or gender. These alternative categories can include behaviors, identities, and communities that stand in contrast to, or even in opposition to, socially and culturally dominant sexual orientations.
MoreNeopronouns are new coinages that were created as an alternative to “they.” Some of them go back further than you might guess, and new ones have cropped up over the years.
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Not all straight women who visit same-sex porn sites are feasting their eyes on handsome hunks; sometimes they’re there for woman-on-woman action. Reports journalist Haley Swanson: “According to 2018 user data from Porn Hub, ‘lesbian’ was the number one used search term for female-identifying users.” James Besanvalle writes that a 2014 Pornhub study “found women searched the most for lesbian porn, closely followed by gay male porn.”
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Remember the days when homosexuality was considered abnormal? Now it’s solosexuality that’s challenging what’s normal sexuality for an adult.
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Illusions of the Photographer: Duane Michals at the Morgan was a comprehensive retrospective at the Morgan Library & Museum, curated by Joel Smith, the institution’s groundbreaking first curator of photography. Michals’ photography epitomizes the conceptualist method—narrative and performed, illusionistic and dreamlike.
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A letter from Mrs. Smith closes the collection, like a Greek chorus commenting on the tragedy. “I am glad you agree with me that we must not grieve for our friend,” she writes to Porter’s friend Jean Howard after he died in 1964, “for he will never have to suffer again. This is the end of an Era. Three great and good men have left the Waldorf now: General MacArthur, Cole Porter, and Herbert Hoover, this year.”
Only in America.
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The “physique” periodicals of the 1950s and ’60s were not just a byproduct of the Homophile movement. They were a catalyst for it.
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DOES ANYONE DOUBT that most autobiographers distort reality, embellishing the truth about themselves, altering the facts relating to third parties, and presenting things in their own best interest? This makes Quentin Crisp’s case exceptional. He achieved something that was almost beyond the humanly possible …
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Gorey, who died in 2000 at the age of 75, was the author and illustrator of a hundred-odd darkly droll little picture books with titles like The Fatal Lozenge, The Deranged Cousins, and The Blue Aspic. Although he grew up in Depression-era Chicago and lived most of his life in Manhattan, first-time readers often assume he was a denizen of gas-lit London.
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