Last night jcruisedirector and I watched some gay cinema (quel surprise). One was so insufferable (29th and Gay) that we turned it off 20 minutes into the movie. The second, was actually pretty good.

The 24th Day is a film adaptation of an AIDS play (again, quel surprise). One character kidnaps the other, because he believes him to be the man who gave him HIV, and holds him hostage while they wait for results. Dramatically speaking, it felt like a writer's workshop piece, and totally looked like one too. But it was fairly well written, even if the ending wasn't the slash and kill moment everything was setting it up to be. That would have at least been more interesting than the "I'll let you live with yourself and the damage you've caused" ending we got.

Overall rating: B-

Before Mel Gibson butchered Jesus in The Passion of the Christ,
Derek Jarman skewered a saint in Sebastiane!



Filmed in Sardinia, and acted entirely in Latin, Jarman's film follows the last days of Saint Sebastiane. Sebastiane was a Roman Soldier during the reign of the emperor Diocletian. When it is revealed that Sebastiane has converted to Christianity he and certain men from his legion are exiled to the desert. There he is forced to recant his faith in Christ or be tortured by his captain. Needless to say he is tortured, and eventually martyred for his faith, as well as his unwillingness to submit to the sexual advances of his captain.

Sebastiane is a visually exciting film, loaded with tons of gratuitous nudity and explicit homoeroticism. But what I found highly intriguing was the actual lack of Christianity in Sebastiane's faith. A lot of the language that he uses for Christ is in comparison to classical Gods like Apollo and Adonis a man beloved of Gods. I don't even know that the name Jesus was ever mentioned at all. Just these descriptions of the Christian God that were as if he had fallen in love with Christ and not actually converted to the faith.

The best parts of this film were the slow parts. Jarman spent about ten minutes or more on a scene of two men frolicking in a pool of water and lovingly touching each other. It was absolutely beautiful to watch. It did little to advance the plot of the film, though it did enhance the sexual tension of the captain.

The torture scenes are not so bad in this film. In fact they were pretty tame as torture goes. More often than anything it looked like they were play-acting at torture instead of actually torturing him. Though the sand on a sunburn scene was pretty bad, if only from experiential memory. And as far as play-acting goes, these men were obviously not soldiers. I've seen more realistic fake sword sparring at the renaissance fair than here. And their spearwork, their archery? No. Terrible.

The music was by Brian Eno, which was kind of a shocker actually. Not that he wouldn't do this film, just that I wasn't expecting it. The music was pretty tame as things went, a soft undertone to the film.

Was Sebastiane a good movie? Not particularly. Was it a sexy movie? Well, yes. Very. Would I watch it again? Sure.
Does this film deserve an X rating? NO. Not in the slightest. There are a lot of full frontal men, but there's no actual sex ever. There's touching, kissing, and that's about it. But, this film came out in the 70's, 1976 in fact, so I guess any kind of love between men and actual male nudity might have constituted enough material for an X rating.

If you want to buy a copy of Sebastiane, it's available on DVD from Amazon.com.

This morning I dreamt that I was at a college, and on behalf of the faeries I was to address this auditorium of people with a song and a lecture. I arrived only to discover that I had no notes, so I didn't have the song and I didn't have the lecture. So I borrowed Eldritch's laptop and quickly rewrote everything in the hallway. It appears that I was part of a larger lecture and not necessarily the main speaker. Because while I'm typing away, the people actually sang the song I was supposed to be teaching them. I could hear them in there. So I saved the document, closed the white laptop and rushed into the room.

"But wait! There's more!"

And I ran up to the front of the room with the laptop. It was one of those lecture halls that seats about 400 students at once. I go down the stairs and get to the lecture table and open up the laptop. I click on Word, to get to the last document worked on, and it's not in the list. Everyone's waiting, and I'm up there, and there's no lecture, no music. I start pulling up random website I looked at earlier, and it's some GLBT activism thing. One of the kids in the front row starts mocking me and the site.

"Mommy, what's a GELIBTA activism? Well, dear it's when gay people feel threated so they band together..."

I give her a sideways glance and continue with my feeble attempt to recover my notes.

I awake in frustration.

Mad Magazine, that purveyor of social satire and all things dreck caught my eye this morning. The cover for the January issue headlines the years 20 dumbest people, and the image of their mascot Alfred E. Neuman is posed hiding on a public toilet seat, pants down, uncharacteristically wide-eyed, while a man's black dress shoe sticks out under the stall.

Yup. You guessed it. Senator Larry Craig made the list, and the subsequent article "Craig's Lust" shows a spoof DVD entitled "There's Something About Larry." The Wide-Stance Edition no less. It made me chuckle and also shocked me a bit, especially looking at that cover art. I'm glad we have it here at the public library.

Though the look on his face makes me wonder. Alfred E. Neuman is known for his maxim of "What, Me Worry?" The look of shock and fear on his face is a little surprising for his character. I think I'd rather him be blase about it, or sarcastic about it, or even snickering at it than afraid. Is it the scene that's making him worry and fear, or is it just Craig himself that he fears? It's a little unclear. Knowing that Mad always goes for the direct hit I could easily say that he's afraid of Craig himself coming after him in the toilet. But still, it seems out of character, and a little too much "gay panic."

That doesn't mean that it isn't funny. Cause trust me, I found it funny. Just complicated.

Westboro Baptist Church ordered to pay $10.9 million for picketing a service member's funeral

being a dick will get you nowhere...
except in the papers...
for being a dick...

The following is the list of names we honored at our DC Radical Faerie Samhain event.

Litany of the Dead

1. Sappho of Lesbos
2. Saint Aelred of Rievaulx
3. We’Wha
4. Walt Whitman (DC)
5. Sarah Orne Jewett
6. Gertrude Stein
7. Alice B. Toklas
8. Oscar Wilde
9. George “Hibiscus” Harris
10. Sylvester
11. Otto Ulrich (DC)
12. Harvey Milk
13. Larry Duckett (DC)
14. Sylvia Rivera
15. Rick Graf
16. Harris Glenn "Divine" Milstead
17. Keith Haring
18. Matthew Shepard
19. Brandon Teena
20. Ruth Ellis
21. Father Mychal Judge
22. Gideon Ferebee (DC)
23. Dominique Foxx (DC)
24. Cody (DC Radical Faerie)
25. Harry Hay
26. Bella Evangelista (DC)
27. Bruce C. Scott (DC)
28. Jack Nichols (DC)
29. Bruce Pennington (DC)
30. Jerrie Linder (DC)
31. Van Smith
32. Tammy Faye Messner
33. Wanda Alston (DC)
34. Barbara Gittings (DC)
35. Cheryl Spector (DC)
36. Henry Moses (DC)

I feel bad that the only one on here that isn't linked is Cody. Cody is a faerie that I never met, and who's name comes up often in remembrance of faeries passed. The one thing I know about Cody is that Baba has his old tarot deck and on occasion cards will fall out of it. He sees this as signifying portents to the group from the spirit of a brother on the other side.

I also feel bad that almost all of Bella Evangelista's information is lost in the transgender murder news of that time period. I don't know why I feel particularly called to remember her. I also never met her, but the story of her death has stuck with me, and I try and remember her name in the litany of the dead every time we do it. Her picture in the Village Voice is the one that is etched eternally in my mind, her performance at Chaos looking radiant and beautiful. I see Our Lady of Guadalupe in that image every time I think of it.

Though I think that the strangest tribute on this list was the one for Henry Moses. I chose to link the Green Party page as it had the most information about his life. But the more moving tribute to his life as a drummer and activist is actually here on the Rhythm Workers page. It's so new to think of him as gone that it's hard to process. Henry drummed with the faeries a lot, often in the pride parade. He was a vibrant soul, full of energy and love.

Tonight I had another private ritual with my friend who's transitioning. This was a full moon rite coinciding with the beginning of her hormone therapy. There was a lot of chanting as speech coming from me for some reason. The first of her transformation rituals began two weeks ago on the dark moon and I opened with

Dark of the Moon
New Beginnings
Dark of the Moon
Plant a seed tonight
Dark of the Moon
What we're beginning
Will come to be
By the full Moon light

Then when we were blessing the pills I busted into The Craft or something

Now is the time
This is the hour
This is the place
This is the power

After the first dose of the medication we sent her into a chrysalis so that she could emerge anew. As I was wrapping her up I fell into

She changes everything she touches
And everything she touches changes

After nine perambulations around the chrysalis she emerged from her new birth. The first thing out of my mouth was

In the name of the Divine Goddess

which, if you've never heard people chanting that, it is AMAZING to hear.

We wrapped it up with some hummus and olives.

It was interesting to hear myself speaking these chants. I can't explain it, but it was quite liturgical.

From The Onion

Nation's Gays Demand Right To Library Cards

I fully support this movement.

I learned a new word yesterday. During Alison Bechdel's speech she said that there was a homosexual library cathexis.

I had no idea what that meant, but having learned mostly about my queerness through the library as well I felt I understood. I looked it up to make sure.

From Sir Merriam-Webster's reliable book:

cathexis

Main Entry: ca·thex·is
Pronunciation: k&-'thek-s&s
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural ca·thex·es /-"sEz/
Etymology: New Latin (intended as translation of German Besetzung), from Greek kathexis holding, from katechein to hold fast, occupy, from kata- + echein to have, hold --
: investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea

In her sense she was implying that queer people are drawn to the library because of how the library as an institution shaped our understandings of ourselves. I think there's a lot of truth in that.

This morning I attended the GLBT Round Table Stonewall Book Awards Brunch. This event happens every year and each year they award two awards, one for glbt fiction the other for glbt non-fiction.

The winner of the Barbara Gittings award for best GLBT fiction was Andrew Holleran for his book "Grief." Grief is a compelling short novel revolving around a man who upon the death of his mother travels to D.C. and becomes engrossed in the letters of Mary Todd Lincoln. Deeply moving, Grief was the unanimous choice for the fiction book of the year. Unfortunately Andrew was away in Europe on a book tour and couldn't recieve his award, but he shared his thanks in a letter that was read before the crowd.

Other finalists for best literature were:

The Manny Files / Christian Burch
The Night Watch / Sarah Waters
Rose of No Man's Land / Michelle Tea
A Scarecrow's Bible / Martin Hyatt

The winner of the Israel Fishman award for best GLBT non-fiction was Alison Bechdel for her graphic novel memoir "Fun Home." Fun Home tells the story of Alison and her family. Through the process of coming out to her father and sharing her experiences her father begins coming to terms with own sexuality. Alison Bechdel spoke this morning at the brunch and she shared her own story of coming out through literature, and the ping-pong process of reading about sex and actually having it and how sometimes the twain did not meet. It was really quite funny and I look forward to reading her book. Oh, and by the way, it's also nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award for best non-fiction book of the year and it's already won loads of awards. The full list is available at: http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/reviews-and-interviews

The other finalists for non-fiction were:

Covering: The Hidden Assault on our Civil Rights / Kenji Yoshino
Gay Power: An American Revolution / David Eisenbach
Male-Male Intimacy in Early America: Beyond Romantic Friendships / William Benemann
Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son: A Memoir / Kevin Jennings

After the brunch I attended a few other lectures on library stuff, and spoke to a few people about books, bought a few books from the trade show floor reps and then headed up to the Public Library Association keynote speech by Armistead Maupin. Originally Elizabeth Edwards, wife of presidential candidate John Edwards, was slated to speak to the ALA, but unfortunately she couldn't make it. As Maupin noted to the attendees there was an irony in that Elizabeth Edwards was in San Francisco speaking at gay pride, when one of the most noted gay authors was in Washington DC speaking to a bunch of librarians. We laughed. Oh, his speech was fantastic. It was about the common questions he gets asked, about his inspiration, his life, and his new book "Michael Tolliver Lives." I won't go into all the details as it's late, but suffice it to say that some of the story in MTL is based exactly on his life, specifically the opening sequence where Michael finds the love of his life at 55 on the internet, and that's not giving anything away as it happens in the first chapter.

I ended the day by walking another gay colleague back to Lambda Rising to go to the Alison Bechdel signing and having a couple bits of kissy time. It was lovely.

And I got LOADS of books.

And I'll be blogging them. Just you watch. ;)

* This gathering was both fantastic and lousy all at the same time. The fantastic was the people and what they did and the lousy was the veritable plague of flies and how they annoyed the shit out of everyone there.

* Took two workshops, one on drawing, one on pysanki. Both were fantastic. Though I left my eggs on the farm by accident. Oh well. A blessing upon the hermitage.

* I always lose a hat at the hermitage. I resolve to wear only bandannas from now on there.

* The auction was great and at $65.00 I got away with all kinds of stuff for a steal. And I've got a very lovely piece of artwork that I swapped out in the living room of a very tasteful watercolor nude. God I love art.

* Everyone who bought drag in the auction (and a few who didn't) participated in a fashion show as the opening number to the talent show. Sweet Jesus it was amazing! Oh lord, the attitude, the bitchery, the posing, the dancing, the visions of cracked out queens was just absolutely priceless. It's going to make it to YouTube eventually and I can't hardly wait!

* The talent show was fantastic. It included lots of songs, poetry, poetry adapted into songs, a stripper/comedian, and a fursuit sexy adaptation of "rubber ducky." It was madness and genius and everything in between. Along with the fashion show I performed "Carmen Miranda's Ghost (is haunting space station 3)." It was highly apropos.

* We had a fun little piece of dance time after the talent show and I was taking requests on my iPod. I was doing on the fly dj'ing and it was faboo.

* There was an INTENSE fire circle. It was so amazingly powerful and holy that I just fell to the ground in thanks and praise and prostration to the fire. I was moved. Seriously, deeply moved. We're talking drumming and chanting and dancing and offerings and giant smudge sticks and prayer and beauty. It was just so much for me to take in that I had to give thanks.

* Made a lot of good friends, re-connected with some old friends, and just got to know people a lot better. And that's really why I go.

As I was cruising the blogosphere this evening, as I am wont to do, I ran across a link to the planet from which many of our people hail:



Somewhere between haute couture, high camp, and aliens is the world of Fabulon. Go there, look at everything and bask in the radiant wonders of decadence at its finest.

I think I'm going to look at this website every day. And it's inspiring new and glorious ideas for Pride.

* Killed 4 mice last night. Only have 2 traps left, and I should have set them last night. I'll set them when I go home this evening. Perhaps I should reuse them but that concept is even more disgusting than the disposal of the mice. Ugh.

* Finishing writing Red Dragon ritual script today.

* Talked to Puppy last night. I'll make a Pupdate for friends only in a bit.

* Doing our first transaction refund today. Just a calculation error that needs to be corrected.

* Trimmed my goatee this morning. My beard is now kind of an equal length.

* I got a second shout-out in the Doctor Who Podshock, this time from a woman in Melbourne, Australia who heard my email read on the broadcast and she had to tell me that she came in at exactly the same time and that she's been going through the Doctor Who Guide. How awesome is it that there is a global fandom that two random people who've never met each other half-way round the world in opposite hemispheres can share stuff like that through a podcast! Emily, if you're out there, you rule!

* Went to Faeries last night, and though half the crew were over cooking for Red Dragon the remainder of us had a great conversation about gendered spaces and then watched a bit of the Merchant Ivory film "Maurice" with Hugh Grant. I was enraptured, but I tore myself away from it in order to go home finally. I said it was like watching Brokeback London. And when I saw that it was a novel by E.M. Forster I knew I had to get it. So I'm going to stop by the used gay book store and see if I can pick up a copy for a dollar or something.

Did you know that there is going to be "Legally Blonde: The Musical"?

No, I'm not kidding.

http://www.legallyblondethemusical.com/

There are video clips available of their soon to be hit song "Omigod, you guys!", "bend and snap" and others in a little medley.

thanks to rei_saru for sharing

I just got done reading Kate Bornstein's "Gender Outlaw." So gender issues are prominent in my mind right now. Reading the book actually made me sit down and think over the places in my life where I thought about gender and the conflation of gender and sexuality and where I fit into this messy messy world. I thought about the wearing of mom's shoes, and jokingly wearing skirts, and about what the intention was behind calling me a "faggot" in school as many kids did.

In my own way I was a gender transgressor without even realizing it. I had a shirt that had a hunky man on the front when I was in high school, but I didn't even think about that because the shirt was a cool orange leopard print thing. I got mocked mercilessly for that shirt. I also had a coat that was like a long denim trenchcoat thing. We bought it at WalMart and I didn't think anything of it, because it was thick (read quilted) and it had leather accents. I thought it was cool. Everyone immediately said "that's a woman's coat" and I was mocked mercilessly. I didn't care, it was warm. REALLY warm.

Flash forward to now and I'm with the faeries. I wear sarongs and broomstick skirts and ballgowns whatever the hell I want to wear whenever I want to. But why? Do I want to be a woman? No. That's not it. I just happen to like these things. I'm continually envious of women's clothing because of the diversity and amazingness of it. So, when I find something I like, and it fits, I keep it, and wear it.

But do I not want to be a man?

What does that even mean?

When I was growing up the boys knew I wasn't like them. I was sensitive, weak, effete, intellectual, non-sporty, and just generally strange in my own way. The mocking and the name calling was a reinforcement that I didn't fit their gender stereotype of what "male" was. After a while I was okay with that. If that's what "Men" were and I was what "faggots" were then so be it. It took years of mulling that over for me to deal with it.

But as Bornstein points out being a "man" and being "homosexual" are two separate and distinct issues; one, the gender identity is an internal identification and one that other people project upon us, the other the sexual orientation is who we partner with when having sex. Because I was not a "manly man" the social pressure was that I was something else, a gay man, or rather a girl. In my mind I never wanted to be a girl. I just liked their clothes. The issue of who I wanted to have sex with was complicated by religion and personal ideas of propriety that didn't get resolved until later.

Then I think about all the auxiliary products of gender identification, especially "men's work and women's work." That always pissed me off. I'm a very hands on, crafts oriented person. I love quilting, needlepoint, knitting, crochet, latch hook rugs, delicate paintings, things like that. My association with those things, in the minds of my peers, labelled me as "faggot."

But is "faggot" a gender?

I don't think it is really. I mean, the basic assumption in my mind is that it's associated with homosex. Which related to, but not the same as gender. And for that matter, needlepoint has nothing to do with gender either. Neither does hunting, or cooking, or basketweaving, or cotillions, or lace, or leather, or any of that. Gender isn't what you do, but we've made those associations. It isn't who you do either, but society has made those associations.

That irks the shit out of me.

rimrunner posted this article from the LA Times about this Christian oriented men's movement. When reading that LA Times article I wondered to myself, why? Why are these men so eager to buy into this? Why do they want to push this idea of masculinity and what it means to be a Christian man. Are they actually questioning their own gender? Do they realize that they're trying to change their gender to make themselves even more of something? A stereotype of something even?

It made me drift to thinking about the New Warriors too. It seems like more and more of the people I know have been involved with this kind of organization, and there has been a lot of gentle encouragement towards me to attend such an event. I've looked at the information on their website, and I've heard from my friends who've gone through this "training" and I've always resisted this. The main reason why I've resisted is because I'm always resistant when people are telling me about how fantastic something is. "Oh, you've GOT to do this! It's what EVERYONE is doing..." Ugh. No thanks. It took me until today to realize the main reason why I've been so reluctant. It's pushing a concept of gender that I don't agree with. It's Doc Grinder up there selling his miracle tablets to make him blue and her pink. This is what men do, and this is what women do and this is how you be a man and not a woman.

Ugh. No thanks.

I guess some people want that kind of "training" in their life. You know the kind. It's the "Tea and Sympathy" school of making Sister-Boy walk the right way and throw a ball when all he wants to do is sing and play music.

Screw that.

Let Sister-Boy be! If he wants to quilt and she wants to play football and ze wants to go rock-climbing with hir and them so what!

All of it is just so ugh.

Where am I in the spectrum? I do identify as male, primarily out of biological reasons, and I've no intention of changing that. I like what I am, and I've never felt like I needed to be anything other than I am. But do I identify as "man?" NO. I don't identify as "Faggot" either. I'm queer, odd, slightly off-kilter. I think that's about as far as I'd label it.

I'm sure this is a topic that's been discussed at length and written about by people far more knowledgeable about the topic than me. But I've been sitting here listening to the Smiths all day long and I've thought for the longest time that there were a number of songs with either an explicitly or implicitly homoerotic bent to them. While I can't say that the songs of The Smiths are exclusively gay, they could at least be looked at over the whole as strongly bisexual. Also, Morrissey himself has long proclaimed his own personal celibacy, the lyrics however speak to a vivid overtly sexual imagination and deeply emotional connection to people of both genders. But let's take a look at some of the male homoerotic ones. There are six recurring elements in the homoerotic songs that could be looked at as a pattern of a young man discovering and acting upon his homosexual identity: Allusion to Gay History, Cruising, Falling in Love, Confession and Coming Out, Cross Dressing, and Rough Trade.

( Exposition Beneath )