Holiday Issue: Ethnographic Journeys
WHAT FOLLOW are “ethnographic journeys” not only in the sense that they transport us to non-Western cultures, but also because they represent a personal journey for writers in search…More
Blog Posts
Caste and Gender Identity in India
Discrimination against Dalit trans people dates back to the colonial era, when the Raj criminalized gender-nonconforming people from marginalized castes.
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A Pansy by Any Other Name…
The Dictionnaire is devoted to the meanings of just 12 words over 900 years, from “sodomite” to “queer.”
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‘Coming In’ as a Two-Spirit Journey
IN MAINSTREAM LGBT CULTURE, a person’s identity is often defined by the act of “coming out” to family, friends, and others. Many Native Americans who identify as Two-Spirit see it differently. Cree Two-Spirit scholar Alex Wilson describes the Two-Spirit journey as one of “coming in,” a reframing that shifts the focus from public disclosure to a return—a reclaiming of one’s place within family, community, culture, and land.
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Native Identities Live On in Africa
Today, African LGBT activists are reclaiming these legacies. In Angola, organizations like Iris, an LGBT rights group, draw on chibado traditions to advocate for trans rights, hosting cultural festivals that echo ancient rituals.
MoreSouth Africa’s Clash of Cultures
Gender fluidity is deeply embedded in African spirituality, which included androgynous and intersex deities.
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Remembering Elena, and Ed White
EDMUND WHITE AND I met at a gay party in Greenwich Village in 1966. Ed had brought his friend Marilyn Schaefer, and I was with my soon-to-be-wife Ann Jones, both of us doing graduate work at Columbia. We exchanged contact info, and within a week Ed and I met again—just me, not Ann. There was a not-too-serious effort at bedding down together, and once that was out of the way, we settled into a nonsexual friendship that lasted (with interruptions) for nearly sixty years.
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A Collector of Artists and Artifacts
I FIRST LEARNED of Max Ewing while researching gay photographer George Platt Lynes. Ewing makes several appearances in the Lynes narrative, both as a young man who moved alongside Lynes in New York’s bohemian circles and as a fellow artist. Ewing used portrait photos to create his own pantheon of artists, movie stars, personalities, and handsome young men—actors, dancers, bodybuilders, and models who caught his eye.
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Cavafy’s Angle on Pleasure
GAY POET Constantine Cavafy (1863–1933) has been called the greatest Greek poet of the 20th century, a serious statement about a nation that produced Yiannis Ritsos and Nobel laureates Odysseus Elytis and George Seferis. Cavafy did not actually visit Greece until his late thirties …
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A Writer Whose Life and Work Were One
THERE REALLY IS no point in trying to separate Christopher Isherwood’s writing from the details of his life. His prolific use of those details has led critics to classify his works as examples of “autofiction.”
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