The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide articles from September 2007

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide archives from September 2007

September-October 2007: "fall reading".(Editorial)
September 1, 2007... That this is the "fall reading" issue is mainly due to the happenstance of a large number of book reviews piling up at once, and incidentally to its cover months (though doubtless "fall" has a different vibe from "summer" books, which we tend...

Lessons from a witch hunt of the 1920's.(GUEST OPINION)
September 1, 2007... The following is adapted from a speech delivered by the author in acceptance of the annual leadership award given for outstanding service to the GLBT community by the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus, an organization of alumni/ae, faculty, and...

Marriage is here to stay in Massachusetts.(GUEST OPINION)
September 1, 2007... "In a couple of years they have built/ A home sweet home/ With a couple of kids running in the yard."--The Beatles, "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da" On May 1, 1991, three same-sex couples in Hawaii asked the court to strike down that state's...

Fighting intolerance not "uncivil".(Correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... To the Editor: I am writing in response to the letter from John L. Watkins printed in the Correspondence column of the May-June 2007 issue [which criticized Dan Savage's contest to assign a vulgar definition to the word "santorum"]. I...

The gay case for animal rights.(Correspondence)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... To the Editor, Thank you for the intriguing interview with PETA VP and author Dan Mathews [July-Aug. 07]. Dan is a shining example of a member of our community using his talent, charm, humor and wit to make the world a kinder and more...

Corrections (roundup for last 3 issues).(Correction notice)
September 1, 2007... In an article on the movie Rebecca in the July-Aug. 07 issue (p. 45), the Cornwall estate of Maxim de Winter was incorrectly given as "Manderlay." The name is actually "Manderley." In the May-June 07 issue, in a review of a book about...

When horny = homo.(BTW)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... The story of the "gay bomb" first surfaced a few years ago, but it seems only the GLBT press took notice, including this column, back then. For whatever reason, this summer the story suddenly blasted into the mainstream media, which was kind of...

Leaving Krakow.(BTW)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Poland is now a full member of the European Community; its bankers and merchants can do business with other EU countries in borderless profitude; its citizens can travel freely and settle in any of the other member countries. In fact, some two...

Update: Pakistan.(BTW)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... An earlier BTW (March-April 2007 issue) reported on the phenomenon that is Begum Nawazish Ali a.k.a. Ali Saleem, a male talk show host(ess) in Pakistan who, dressed in high drag, is able to discuss a range of issues that are normally taboo on...

Heady mix.(BTW)(gays on the road of Keizer, Oregon)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... The traffic posts were pretty much standard issue, but their sudden appearance on the streets of Keiser, Oregon, raised eyebrows nonetheless. Perhaps the good citizens of Keizer just need to get out more often, or perhaps there was something...

How banning same-sex marriage hurts hetero marriage.(BTW)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... In this age of "freakonomics," we've learned that causes and effects are often related in unexpected ways. For example, an analysis by Dale Carpenter (Bay Area Reporter, 5/24/07) showed that by banning same-sex marriage the states are actually...

A modern Orpheus descends.(ESSAY)(Notebooks)
September 1, 2007... Notebooks by Tennessee Williams Margaret Bradham Thornton, editor Yale University Press. 828 pages, $40. ON AUGUST 2, 1936, at the age of 25, Thomas Lanier Williams confided to his notebook: "I wish I loved somebody very...

Trans-sex and the facticity of the flesh.(ESSAY)(transsexuals )(Critical essay)
September 1, 2007... ULTIMATE SUBJECTS--bodies, sex, anatomy, gender, genes, hormones, chromosomes: identity. Sexuality, though causally and reciprocally dependent upon gender, is indubitably more complex, because it subsumes the entire range of behavior and...

Julian Eltinge's manly transformation.(ESSAY)
September 1, 2007... IN AUGUST, 1921, an article by Johnny O'Connor ran in the Dramatic Mirror celebrating drag star Julian Eltinge's return to the stage as a headliner. O'Connor wrote: "For years he has stood out in the vaudeville 'Who's Who' as the peer of...

Say You're Not True.(Poem)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Two young men in white shirts with starched collars Come to the door and ask me to let them in. Their ties lie quietly between their breasts Where I would lay if only it were so. They tell me it is getting dark And soon the world will...

Let the Gendercator be shown.(ESSAY)
September 1, 2007... THE SHORT FILM The Gendercator has been pulled from this year's San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival by the festival producer Frameline at the behest of transgendered people and their supporters. Community organizers declare that the...

Sapphic subtexts in ladies' magazines.(ESSAY)
September 1, 2007... A LOVELY CHARCOAL DEPICTION of two beautiful women nestled in bed together graces more than half the page of Palmolive Soap's 1915 full-page ad, whose subhead states that it "Appeals to Dainty Women." Dressed in frilly peignoirs and negligees,...

Buddhism and the gender continuum.(ESSAY)
September 1, 2007... Due to the impact of the lectures that I gave at Mahachulalongkorn University, Koen Kaen and Roi Et campuses, I was very lucky to be invited to participate in the Fourth Annual International Buddhist Conference, held at the United Nations...

The man who loved JFK.(John F. Kennedy )(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Jack & Lem: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship, John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings by David Pitts Carroll & Graf. 384 pages, $26.95 THE OLD black-and-white photograph shows two good-looking young men sitting close...

A picture of Oscar Wilde.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters Edited by Merlin Holland Carroll & Graf. 384 pages, $27.95 ONE HUNDRED YEARS after the death of Oscar Wilde in 1900, all of his known surviving letters--1,562 of them--were published, edited by his...

Of living rooms and liberation politics.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian rights Movement by Marcia Gallo Carroll & Graff. 274 pages, $25.95 IN 1955, Rose Bamberger, a Filipina lesbian, brought together four couples...

The man from Mattachine.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Jack Nichols, Gay Pioneer: "Have You Heard My Message?" by J. Louis Campbell III, JD, PhD Harrington Park Press 358 pages, $69.95 (paper: $29.95 THE 1970's was the golden age of gay bar guides, those little publications with...

Papa's youngest son Gloria.(Ernest Hemingway and his son Gloria Hemingway)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Strange Tribe: A Family Memoir by John Hemingway The Lyons Press. 185 pages, $24.95 AT 5:45 A.M. on October 4, 2001, in a women's detention center in Miami, Florida, Gloria Hemingway was found dead on the floor of her jail cell....

The other Spanish Inquisition.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Sexual Hierarchies, Public Status: Men, Sodomy, and Society in Spain's Golden Age by Cristian Berco University of Toronto Press 248 pages, $55. DURING THE SUMMER of 1625 in the region of Valencia, Spain, three adolescent boys,...

The new normal.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Slipstream by Leslie Larson Shaye Areheart Books. 324 pages, $14. (paper) LESLIE LARSON'S debut novel, Slipstream, captures with extraordinary vividness the ubiquitous anxieties of life in post-9/11 America. Almost none of...

More people in trouble.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The Child by Sarah Schulman Carroll & Graf. 288 pages, $24.95 SARAH SCHULMAN'S latest novel, The Child, is a complex story about people who are caught in the clutches of our society's systems. The novel follows the lives of two...

Who was who in the arts.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints by Joan Acocella Pantheon Books. 544 pages, $30. JOAN ACOCELLA writes beautifully on every topic she covers, and this collection of her biographical essays over the last two decades shimmers...

Story time.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Between Men: Best New Gay Fiction Edited by Richard Canning Carroll & Graf. 368 pages, $15.95 (paper) SHORT STORY ANTHOLOGIES are always a mixed bag, but they do serve the purpose of providing new short works by favorite authors,...

Hidden in plain sight.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The Skin Beneath by Nairne Holtz Insomniac Press. 265 pages, $16.95 THIS ACCOMPLISHED FIRST NOVEL by a bibliographer of Canadian lesbian fiction is classified by the publisher as a "lesbian mystery." However, it could as well be...

Getting to male.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The First Man-Made Man by Pagan Kennedy Bloomsbury 214 pages, $23.95 CHANCES ARE that, as soon as you were old enough to form a cognizant thought, some adult was asking you what you wanted to be when you grew up. Did you want to...

The persistence of Baldwin.(James Baldwin)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Voices Rising: Celebrating 20 Years of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Writing Edited by G. Winston James Redbone Press. 583 pages, $25. THE DEDICATION PAGE of Voices Rising bears a quotation from James Baldwin's 1979...

Fate.(Poem)
September 1, 2007... flipping through a self-help book in Barnes & Noble saw you reading a collection of Japanese death poems

Macho man.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Androphilia, A Manifesto: Rejecting the Gay Identity, Reclaiming Masculinity by Jack Malebranche Scapegoat Press, 144 pages, $12.95 WITHOUT APOLOGY, without frills--brought to you by Scapegoat Publishing, whose motto is "Blame...

Mood food.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Comfort Food for Breakups: The Memoir of a Hungry Girl by Marusya Bociurkiw Arsenal Pulp Press. 171 pages, $16.95 MARUSYA BOCIURKIW is a first-generation Ukrainian-Canadian who's a professor, a novelist, a poet, a performance...

Return to Barbary Lane.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin HarperCollins. 277 pages, $25.95 FANS of Armistead Maupin's magnificent "Tales of the City" series have a reading treat awaiting them. As the title of Maupin's new novel reveals, Michael...

Taking on the hard right.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Bashing Back: Wayne Besen on GLBT People, Politics, and Culture by Wayne R. Besen Harrington Park Press. 205 pages, $14.95 WAYNE BESEN is a fiercely outspoken gay journalist who has corralled a bunch of his maverick essays from the...

The Luminous City.(Poem)
September 1, 2007... 1. David Hockney and I 0in an elevator: 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, both of us staring straight ahead. We share a rapidly descending dream of blond California boys glistening in ample pools and showers, their beauty dazzling this Eastern...

Mary Coble's body, electrified.(ART MEMO)(aversion and electric shock therapy)
September 1, 2007... MARY COBLE'S BODY was electrically shocked repeatedly on Friday, May 18, 2007. She was hooked up to electrodes and shown images of both hetero- and homosexual situations that became progressively more erotic. Electric shocks were administered...

Douglas Simonson's portraits from 'paradise'.(ARTIST'S PROFILE)(Interview)
September 1, 2007... The male nude has been an iconic subject for artists since Classical times, and it remains so today. Few people understand the power and beauty of the male figure better than Douglas Simonson, who has made male nudes the pillar of a successful,...

Roulette.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Roulette by Adrian Brooks Suspect Thoughts Press. 240 pages, $16.95 Roulette is a hilarious, outrageous, and intentionally hokey social and political manifesto, absolutely gay in its rebellious, over-the-top spirit. Like an...

James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips Picador. 545 pages, $18. In the late 1960's, a writer by the name of James Tiptree Jr. began appearing in science fiction magazines. His stories were not...

The Understory.(Brief article)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The Understory by Pamela Erens Ironweed Press. 143 pages, $11.95 This is the first novel by Pamela Erens, a short story writer and former editor at Glamour magazine. While she covers some of the same territory mined by novelist...

Conferences/events.(Bulletin Board)(Brief article)(Calendar)
September 1, 2007... The Human Rights Campaign Southern Comfort Conf. will be held in Atlanta, Sept. 11-16. Visit: www.sccatl.org/main.htm. Tennessee Williams Theater Festival--the second annual--will be held in Provincetown, Sept. 27-30, 2007. For more info,...

That obscure object of fulfillment.(Theater review)
September 1, 2007... Some Men by Terrence McNally Second Stage Theatre, New York "I WANT to kill myself sometimes when I think I'm the only person in the world and the part of me that feels that way is trapped inside this body that only bumps into...