The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide articles from July 2003

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide archives from July 2003

July-August 2003: animal magnetism.(sexual attraction and beauty in gay couples)
July 1, 2003... Sexual attraction has ever been the stuff of popular songs and other cultural artifacts, where it is variously mysterious or heartbreaking or the ultimate fulfillment of one's destiny. But it is always complicated. Needless to say, these...

Correspondence.(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2003... No Defense for the Abuse of Minors To the Editor: Two articles in the March-April issue, "The Boston/Boise Affair, 1977-78," by Art Cohen, and "Kandahar: Closely Watched Pashtuns," by Brian James Baer, reflect a sentiment that our...

Fighting hate with humor. (BTW).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2003... How best to respond when the Reverend Phelps comes to your town with his ragtag band brandishing their "God Hates Fags" signs? This always presents a dilemma. To counter-demonstrate risks dignifying their little burlesque, but to ignore it...

A tale of two billboards. (BTW).(preventing homophobia)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2003... Two recent announcements involving public signage tell a story of uneven development in Europe. The first comes from the UK, where the British Tourist Authority (BTA) announced a billboard campaign that features a photo of Big Ben with the...

Weird science. (BTW).(ordinary cells can be made into eggs)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2003... Scientists at U-Penn announced that they had successfully turned ordinary mouse embryo cells into egg cells in laboratory dishes, suggesting that science will soon be able to make human eggs from ordinary cells. This feat has enormous...

Weird science 2. (BTW).(transsexuals freeze sperm before operations)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2003... Men planning to have a sex-change operation in Scotland are being urged to freeze their sperm before going under the knife, in case they decide to become "fathers" later on. Noting that about half of all MTF transsexuals end up in a lesbian...

Axis of abstention. (BTW).(human rights protection )(Brief Article)
July 1, 2003... The U.S. has decided to abstain in a U.N. vote on human rights that would condemn discrimination based on sexual orientation, in effect joining a coalition led by the Islamic states to scuffle the resolution. Introduced by Brazil and supported...

American samizdat. (BTW).(sexually transmitted disease research standards)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2003... The New York Times reported that scientists who study AIDS and other STD's have been warned by federal health officials to avoid using certain words and phrases in their grant proposals, lest they come under "unusual scrutiny" by the Department...

'The sensual part of beauty is the wound': Chris Freeman interviews a novelist of youth and age. (Interview).(Interview)
July 1, 2003... Edmund White is the award-winning author of more than a dozen books, including the autobiographical trilogy A Boy's Own Story, The Beautiful Room is Empty, and The Farewell Symphony, as well as The Joy of Gay Sex (with Charles Silverstein),...

Confessions of a webcam exhibitionist. (Essay).
July 1, 2003... IN 1999 A GAY FRIEND confided to me a unique way of making money that capitalized on the growing technological possibilities of the Internet. The idea, like many Internet schemes, sounded too good to be true. With a seventy dollar webcam, a few...

Do butch and femme still attract? (Essay).
July 1, 2003... 'BUTCH" AND "FEMME" roles have been part of lesbian culture since the 19th century and are said to be undergoing a resurgence in the American lesbian community. But just how central are these roles when lesbians actively seek one another out...

Homoeroticism in La cazzaria (1525). (Essay).
July 1, 2003... The following passage is excerpted from the author's introduction to his new translation of a book written in 1525 by Antonio Vignali (1500-1559), a young Italian nobleman from Siena, entitled La cazzaria, or The Book of the Prick (Routledge,...

On beauty. (Essay).
July 1, 2003... IT'S JUST PAST NOON on an April Sunday in Washington, D.C. A friend and I are waiting for a third friend to join us for a bicycle ride along the C&O Canal, just where the towpath begins in Georgetown. In front of us are the remains of an...

John Rechy at home. (Artist's Profile).
July 1, 2003... Rechy's autobiographical novel, City of Night, about a lonely hustler drifting across the country, first appeared in 1963, shocking the literary world and becoming a controversial bestseller. It was published before I was born, but when I came...

Pain and the lesbian body. (Conversation).(Interview)
July 1, 2003... Over the past decade, we have each had pronounced experiences with pain which have punctuated our ongoing conversations about literature, queer theory, feminism, and daily life. While we have casually mused about the relationship between our...

Reflections on gay male porn. (Essay).
July 1, 2003... "Not even a ship under full sail is as beautiful as a young boy's ass." Latin inscription over the entrance to a ruined villa outside Rome IF PROSTITUTION is the world's oldest profession, pornography is surely one of its oldest...

Lord of the Ring taps a gay archetype. (Essay).(homoeroticism in the Lord of the Rings novels and films)(Critical Essay)
July 1, 2003... THE LORD OF THE RINGS gives a significant purpose and meaning to enduring male-male partnerships that many more overtly gay narratives do not. In both the original three-part novel by J. R. R. Tolkien and its recent cinematic adaptation, a...

Can Will and Grace be "queered"? (Essay).(gay themes in the television program 'Will and Grace')
July 1, 2003... QUEER THEORY proposes to understand the construction and operation of categories and the identities they shape and contain. In some early applications of queer theory to the analysis of popular culture, queer theorists examined mainstream texts...

Building a GLBT literary tradition in Russia. (International Spectrum).
July 1, 2003... When I mentioned to a friend recently that I was writing an article for The Gay & Lesbian Review, the Moscow writer--who keeps his sexual orientation hidden from his fellow literati--sounded concerned. "Aren't you afraid to be published in a...

An American Back from Paris. (Books).(Marsden Hartley: Man of the World, Painter from Maine)(Book Review)
July 1, 2003... Marsden Hartley: Man of the World, Painter from Maine Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT Marsden Hartley Catalogue of the Exhibition Edited by Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser Yale Univ. Press. 334 pages, $55. The following is based...

Where the Poetry Is the Political. (Books).(Identity Poetics: Race, Class, and the Lesbian-Feminist Roots of Queer Theory)(Book Review)
July 1, 2003... Identity Poetics: Race, Class, and the Lesbian-Feminist Roots of Queer Theory by Linda Garber Columbia University Press 262 pages, $49.95 ($18.50 paper) HAS A RETRO WAVE of lesbian feminism washed over the country? Have we...

Public Outings. (Books).(Scandal: Infamous Gay Controversies of the Twentieth Century)(Book Review)
July 1, 2003... Scandal: Infamous Gay Controversies of the Twentieth Century by Marc E.Vargo Harrington Park Press 195 pages, $34.95 THE COVER of Scandal: Infamous Gay Controversies of the Twentieth Century is deceptive: a handsome man in his...

How the "Gay Gene" Model Caught On. (Books).(Reinventing the Male Homosexual: The Rhetoric and Power of the Gay Gene)(Book Review)
July 1, 2003... Reinventing the Male Homosexual: The Rhetoric and Power of the Gay Gene by Robert Alan Brookey Indiana University Press 167 pages, $27.95 THE HOOPLA around the "gay gene" has died down somewhat since the early 1990's when...

A Farewell to the Male Body. (Books).(Brief Article)(Poem)
July 1, 2003... A Farewell to the Male Body JAMES NAJARIAN There is no guidebook to this country. Hardly anyone ends up here. The borders are guarded, and very secure. The duty is high, and the customs, difficult. There's not much for a...

Monastic Voyage. (Books).(Keeping Faith: A Skeptic's Journey)(Book Review)
July 1, 2003... Keeping Faith: A Skeptic's Journey by Fenton Johnson Houghton Mifflin. 336 pages, $25. WHILE attending a conference at a Catholic abbey in 1996, Fenton Johnson found himself unable to participate in the ritual of making the sign...

A Free Woman in Paris. (Books).(Wild Heart: A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney's Journey from Victorian America to the Literary Salons of Paris)(Book Review)
July 1, 2003... Wild Heart: A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney's Journey from Victorian America to the Literary Salons of Paris by Suzanne Rodriguez Ecco Press (HarperCollins). 432 pages, $27.95 SUZANNE RODRIGUEZ has brought to life one of the 20th...

The "Interzone". (Books).(Colonial Affairs: Bowles, Burroughs, and Chester Write Tangier)(Book Review)
July 1, 2003... Colonial Affairs: Bowles, Burroughs, and Chester Write Tangier by Greg Mullins University of Wisconsin Press. 164 pages, $19.95 IN his 1991 film version of William Burroughs' novel Naked Lunch, director David Cronenberg vividly...

Film Chat. (Books).(Screening Party)(Book Review)
July 1, 2003... Screening Party by Dennis Hensley Alyson Books. 297 pages, $16.95 DENNIS HENSLEY has carved out a fairly nice journalistic niche for him self, writing about Hollywood and films. The British publication Premiere gave him the...

Men in Exciting Positions. (Books).(Gay Men and Anal Eroticism: Tops, Bottoms, and Versatiles)(Book Review)
July 1, 2003... Gay Men and Anal Eroticism: Tops, Bottoms, and Versatiles by Steven G. Underwood. Illustrations by John Andert Harrington Park Press. 225 pages, $24.95 GAY MEN and Anal Eroticism cracks open an important and curiously taboo...

Someone Waits for Me. (Books).(Where the Boys Are)(Book Review)
July 1, 2003... Where the Boys Are by William J. Mann Kensington Books. 432 pages, $24. IT's millennium eve in New York City, and ex-boyfriends Jeff and Lloyd are celebrating at a raucous gay club. In the course of the evening Jeff falls for a...

Riddle. (Books).(Brief Article)(Poem)
July 1, 2003... Riddle DIANE FURTNEY I am the oddity that is un-strange. I'm the silver that rhymes with orange. I am the obstinate, slow- metabolic plant that grows in the night at the rate of sediments and infloresces extravagantly...

Conferences/Events.(Calendar)
July 1, 2003... Activating Human Rights and Diversity Conference to be held July 1--4, 2003, in Byron Bay, Australia. Contact Dr. Baden Offord (Southern Cross Univ., Linsmore) via e-mail: rofford@scu.edu.au. For more info, go to: www.hmcs.scu.edu.au. ...

Dean's Case. (Film).(AKA)(Movie Review)
July 1, 2003... AKA Directed by Duncan Roy Film Four Lab A RECURRING leitmotif of gay male culture is the quest to rise from humble origins into the realm of nobility--not, mind you, just to get rich, but to break into high society, into a real or...