Monthly Archives: May 2012

Christer Strömholm’s Girlfriends of Place Blanche

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In New York, the International Center for Photography is currently showing Christer Strömholm’s most acclaimed body of work, Les Amies de Place Blanche.

During the late 50′s and early 60′s Strömholm befriended and
photographed young Parisian transsexual women struggling to raise money
for sex-change operations. He wrote about his photographs in 1983, “It
was then—and still is—about obtaining the freedom to choose one’s own
life and identity.”

If you happen to be in New York you shouldn’t miss this show, which
runs through September 2, and for those of us not lucky enough to catch
the show in person, the International Center for Photography has more photos online than I’ve posted here.

Soraya and Sonia, 1962

Belinda, 1967

Nana, 1959

Jacky, 1961

Question One Screening in Minneapolis

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If you’re looking for something to do in Minneapolis tonight or tomorrow, I would highly recommend going to see Question One, a documentary film by Joe Fox and James Nubile.

The Question One website
says, “On May 6th, 2009 Maine became the first state in this country to
legislatively grant same-sex couples the right to marry. Seven months
later, on November 3rd, 2009 Maine, thru a referendum election,
reversed, becoming the thirty-first state in this country to say “no” to
gay and lesbian marriage.” Question One documents both sides of the
emotional battle that took place over this issue.

One thing that made this documentary so compelling to me was its
commitment to showing the complexity of opinion that led to people
taking one side or the other. I was also fascinated by the doubt felt by Marc Mutty,
chair of the “Yes on One” campaign. Watching this film gives you a
clear sense of how low conservatives are willing to go to win the battle
and Mutty fights with his conscience throughout the film about actions
that are being taken in the name of winning.  I think the
documentary is especially relevant for Minnesotans since the state is
currently facing its own vote to amend the constitution of the state to ban same sex marriage of couples.

The showing is at the Mall of America and you can get tickets here.
If you’re catching this blog post late or aren’t from the Twin Cities, I
believe the DVD will be out in the fall. I would highly recommend
checking it out then.

Is Obama our first gay president? Nope, we’ve already had a couple queer men in the Oval Office (and at least one in the Cabinet)

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Newsweek cover - Obama as first gay president

The Newsweek cover image

This week’s edition of Newsweek, with is it’s poorly photoshopped cover declaring Barack Obama our first gay president, has caused quite a stir.
The reference is itself sensationalistic and dumb, playing on the
notion of Bill Clinton being our first black president. Too bad, too,
since the discussion about Newsweek’s cover distracts from the
interesting article by Andrew Sullivan inside the magazine.

Okay, so Newsweek didn’t mean for us to take it literally. But it didn’t take long for outlets like Daily Kos and Salon to point out that not only is Obama not gay, our first gay president was most likely James Buchanan. And his presumed lover? Our first gay vice president, Rufus King. And Obama is not (even nominally) our second gay president as that title most likely belongs to Abe Lincoln. As long as we’re on a gay civics lesson, which Federalist was queer? Alexander Hamilton,
our first bisexual cabinet member. To find out more about these queer
18th and 19th century politicians, follow the links below:

Read more about our first gay president and our first gay vice president, James Buchanan and Rufus King.

Read more about our second gay/queer president, Abraham Lincoln.

Read more about our first queer cabinet member, Alexander Hamilton.

There have always been queer people and their will always be queer
people. That some of our presidents or early statesmen enjoyed the
affections of other men should really come as no surprise.

The first queer Cabinet member? Alexander Hamilton.

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The Alexander Hamilton & John Laurens Statue in Lafayette Park, Philadelphia

Hamilton & Laurens together again

Today I happened to see the new issue of Gay and Lesbian Review, in which historian Michael Aubrecht presents the evidence
that Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury and
notorious playboy, was most likely bisexual. Letters between Hamilton
and the soldier and statesman John Laurens suggest the two men may have
had an intimate relationship. In the excerpt below, Hamilton reassures
Laurens that despite his upcoming wedding to his fiancée, Elizabeth
Schuyler, his love for Laurens remains:

In spite of Schylers black eyes, I have still a part for the public and another for you; so your impatience to have me married is misplaced; a strange cure by the way, as if after matrimony I was to be less devoted than I am now. Let me tell you, that I intend to restore the empire of Hymen and that Cupid is to be his prime Minister. I wish you were at liberty to transgress the bounds of Pennsylvania. I would invite you after the fall to Albany to be witness to the final consummation. My Mistress is a good girl, and already loves you because I have told her you are a clever fellow and my friend; but mind, she loves you a l’americaine not a la françoise [sic].
Adieu, be happy, and let friendship between us be more
than a name.
A Hamilton
The General & all the lads send you their love.

Historian Bob Arnebeck interprets the letter from Hamilton: “In
the extant letters, this is the last of Hamilton’s homoerotic bravado
with Laurens. But it is quite enough to allow us to label Hamilton as a
man with a wide appetite for pleasures that comfortably included
homosexuality. Marriage would be no cure for his love for Laurens.” A
statue of the two men stand in Lafayette Park in Philadelphia, a
testament to their friendship.

 

Return to the main article.

Read about our first gay president and first gay vice president, James Buchanan and Rufus King.

Read about our second gay/queer president, Abraham Lincoln.

The second gay/queer president? Abraham Lincoln.

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Abraham Lincoln & Joshua Speed

Young love? Abraham Lincoln & Joshua Speed

Some historians believe that Buchanan wasn’t our only queer
president. And which president do they debate about? None other than Abraham Lincoln. While sharing beds was common in Lincoln’s time, Keith Stern, author of Queers in History, takes exception with the suggestion that Lincoln and shopkeeper Joshua Speed sharing a bed for four years was typical:

Some historians note that it was common
for men to share beds in those days, there was a shortage of beds. 
But they fail to recognize that many of those men were also lovers.

It’s true, there was a shortage of beds,
and as men traveled around they might arrive at a roadside inn where
there was lack of space, so they might be forced to share a room or even
a bed with one or two other men.  There were many jokes about what
went on in those shared beds too.

But it was unusual for two adult men to happily sleep together at home for so long the way that Abe and Josh did….

Nearly four years later, on January 1,
1841, Abe learned that Josh was leaving him and going back to his native
Kentucky.  Abe was devastated and suffered symptoms of what today
we would call a nervous breakdown, an episode known to historians as
Lincoln’s “fatal first.”… By the way, there is not a shred of evidence
to support the contention of some historians that Lincoln also broke off
an engagement with Mary Todd or suffered any of the other myriad
setbacks that some have postulated to explain what upset him on that
fateful day, other than the well-documented impending separation from
Speed….

As Abe grew older he continued to have
intimate relationships with men…. Even as president, Lincoln formed a
close attachment to a soldier, Captain David V. Derickson, who was the
commander of his guards.  In 1862 and 1863, they shared a bed in
the White House and a getaway cottage at the outskirts of town. 
Believe me, there were plenty of extra beds in the White House.

Lincoln’s same-sex relationships did not
go unnoticed by contemporaries and early biographers. Virginia Woodbury
Fox, a well-connected Washingtonian, wrote in an 1862 diary entry:

“Tish says, ‘there is a Bucktail
Soldier here devoted to the President, drives with him, and when Mrs L.
is not home, sleeps with him.’ What stuff!”

Even thirty-three years later, Thomas
Chamberlain, one of Lincoln’s bodyguards, remembered the relationship of
the two men when he wrote a history of the regiment:

“Captain Derickson, in particular,
advanced so far in the President’s confidence and esteem that, in Mrs.
Lincoln’s absence, he frequently spent the night at his cottage,
sleeping in the same bed with him, and — it is said — making use of His
Excellency’s night-shirt!”

Scandalous stuff.  Some historians
like to say these observers were not implying a sexual relationship,
only that the two men were good friends, and it was perhaps slightly
improper for a common soldier to become so close to the President. 
But the fact that people of the time invariably noted the men slept
together only when Mrs. Lincoln was not around, indicates to me that
they had an inkling what was going on — they were aware that the
relationship was somehow hidden from and perhaps a substitute for
Lincoln’s terrible marriage to Mary Todd….

We will likely never know for sure if
Abraham Lincoln had sexual relations with those men.  But it seems
clear he had a passionate desire for intimacy with men to an extent that
attracted notice among the people who knew him.

(For more information on what other historians think, the Wikipedia article on Lincoln’s sexuality summarizes the arguments of both historians who suggest Lincoln was queer and historians who find this idea preposterous.)

 

Return to the main article.

Read about our first gay president and our first gay vice president, James Buchanan and Rufus King.

Read about our first queer Cabinet member, Alexander Hamilton.

The first gay president? James Buchanan. The first gay vice president? Rufus King.

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James Buchanan

James Buchanan

Some historians believe that Buchanan, our only bachelor president,
may have had an intimate relationship with Rufus King, our only bachelor
vice president. A blog post at Presidential History Geeks writes about the open-secret relationship between the two men:

While in Washington, Buchanan’s “room
mate” was Senator Rufus King. The two men were virtually inseparable and
were rumored to be lovers.They shared a house and a bedroom (this
apparently was not uncommon for the time.) Many openly wrote and spoke
this accusation. For example, Tennessee Governor Aaron Brown was sent to
Washington as an advance man for President-Elect Polk, and wrote Polk
back, describing King as Buchanan’s “better half” and as “Aunt Nancy” (a
derogatory term for homosexuals). Although Buchanan was unmarried,
Brown writes to Polk: “General Saunders, in the presence of Mr. Buchanan
and his wife and some others, advanced the opinion that
neither Mr. Calhoun nor Mr. Van Buren had any chance to be elected…and
being asked by someone, who then can be, he forgot himself and said that
Colonel Polk could run better than any man in the nation. This of
course was highly indecorous toward Mrs. B.” Former President Andrew
Jackson would also refer to Rufus King as “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy”,
both being derogatory terms for gay men in the 19th century.

Rufus King (image by Matthew Brady)

Rufus King (image by Matthew Brady)

In my opinion, the most interesting evidence of Buchanan’s
homosexuality is an excerpt of a letter he wrote to a female friend
after King left the States to become the ambassador to France:

“I am now solitary and alone having no
companion in the house with me. I have gone wooing to several gentlemen
but have not succeeded with any of them. I feel that it is not good for
man to be alone, and I should not be astonished to find myself married
to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners
for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or
romantic affection.”

 

Return to the main article.

Read about our second gay/queer president, Abraham Lincoln.

Read about our first queer Cabinet member, Alexander Hamilton.

Earth to Romney: Punishing Kids for Transgressing Gender Norms IS “Anti-Gay Bullying”

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The Forcible Haircut

Mitt Romney in the Cranbrook yearbook

Mitt Romney in the Cranbrook yearbook: “Give a guy enough rope and he’ll hang himself.” (Photo credit: The New York Times)

The Washington Post
wrote this week about Mitt Romney’s time at the Cranbrook prep school,
highlighting an incident in which Romney led a group in assaulting a
fellow student. When Romney saw soft-spoken new student John Lauber with
bleach-blond hair hanging over one eye, Romney told his friend, “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!”
Later Romney led his friends to Lauber’s dorm room where they held down
the terrified student while Romney hacked at Lauber’s hair with
scissors. Lauber was crying and screaming for help. The Washington Post
verified the story by independently interviewing five people who were
students at Cranbrook at the time and who witnessed or participated in
the assault. After Lauber was attacked by Romney and his friends,
“Lauber seemed to disappear. He returned days later with his shortened
hair back to its natural brown. He finished the year but ultimately left
the school before graduation — thrown out for smoking a cigarette.”
(Lauber’s sisters disagree that he allowed his hair to return to it’s
natural color, saying “he never stopped bleaching it,” keeping blond
hair until his death from liver cancer in 2004.)

Romney’s Response

When the Washington Post story broke, Romney’s campaign said that he
had no memory of the incident. (Contrast this with the interviews with
the other men involved in the attack who were later horrified at their
own behavior, some of them apologizing to Lauber. Phillip Maxwell, who
helped hold Lauber down while Romney cut Lauber’s hair, questions if
Romney has truly forgotten the attack. Maxwell told the New York Times,
“I would think this would be seared in his memory…. Certainly for the
other people that were involved, nobody has forgotten.”) Then Romney
gave a weak apology in an interview on a Fox News radio show:

“Back in high school, I did some dumb things, and if
anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize for
that. I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high
school, and some might have gone too far, and for that I apologize…”

Why does that apology sound so insincere? Because it’s conditional.
It only kicks in as an apology if one happens to be hurt or offended,
never mind just assuming that when someone is bullied and physically
assaulted that people (especially the victim) are both hurt and
offended. Romney then takes issue with the article for portraying
Lauber as a target for such “hijinks” because of, according to the
Washington Post, Lauber’s “nonconformity and presumed homosexuality”:

“I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case.”

What Romney Doesn’t Get

Here’s what Romney doesn’t get about anti-gay bullying: he assumes
that if the bully didn’t know or even presume that the victim was gay
that it’s not “anti-gay bullying,” it’s just “hijinks.” There are many
out queer students who are bullied every day because of their sexual
orientation. And there are many students who are bullied every day
because they are presumed to be queer. Some of those presumed to be
queer are straight and others come out later in life (as John Lauber
did). This happens today and it happened when Romney was a teenager. And
in the past, when sexual orientation and gender identity were less
openly discussed (and identity politics as we know it had yet to emerge)
much of the bullying that went on was not tied to a named identity
assigned to the victim. While homosexuality was not the furthest thing
from everyone’s minds in the 1960s, I do believe Romney when he says that it was the furthest thing from his mind. From Romney’s heterocentic viewpoint, he couldn’t
conceive of the possibility of Lauber being gay. But just because
Romney didn’t presume Lauber’s homosexuality doesn’t mean that his
assault on Lauber shouldn’t be considered under the umbrella of
“anti-gay bullying.” Romney may not have attached Lauber’s gender presentation to a sexual orientation, but that doesn’t change why Romney bullied him: Romney assaulted Lauber for transgressing gender norms (as defined by Romney.)
In the end, it doesn’t matter if Lauber was gay or if Romney presumed
he was gay; Romney attacked Lauber because of his flamboyant gender
presentation (“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong.”), and that’s
anti-gay bullying.

Maurice Sendak, Author and Illustrator Passes Away at 83

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Illustration from Sendak’s book ‘Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More To Life’

Like almost everyone who grew up in an era where his books were available, I love Maurice Sendak’s work.

Famous for Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak had a prolific career
and most recently published Bumble-ardy in 2011. Sendak died on Tuesday
May 8th at the age of 83.

Sendak was openly gay, but only in his later years. The New York Times
wrote in their obituary of Sendak, “As Mr. Sendak grew up — lower
class, Jewish, gay — he felt permanently shunted to the margins of
things. “All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy,”
he told The New York Times in a 2008 interview. “They never, never,
never knew.””

Like so many artists and writers, the unhappiness of his childhood
shaped his outlook and his art. Sendak pushed the boundaries of what was
considered appropriate for children, never shying away from melancholy
or intense topics. In Sendak’s books, dogs ran away from home, bad kids
didn’t get supper, giant chefs might try to mix you into batter, and
pigs were denied birthday celebrations.

Sendak was known for being blunt, curmudgeonly, and unsentimental but
he clearly respected the intellect of his young audiences and credited
them with the ability to understand children’s books that had
complexity.

In a interview with Terry Gross
on NPR, Sendak talked about the fragility and irrationality of life. He
grieved the recent death of two of his close friends but maintained,
despite the difficulty of loss, ”I am in love with the world.”

In the interview Sendak told Gross, ”I don’t believe in an
afterlife, but I still fully expect to see my brother again.” I hope
that he found his brother on the other side.

dear old dad: how television reflects the shifting landscape of child care

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last week, when i was at the y, catching bits of cnn between
reading “who wore it best” and  ”celebrities: they’re just like
us!” like i do, i caught this story about the rise in number of stay-at-home dads:

among fathers with a wife in the workforce, 32% took care of
their kids at least one day a week in 2010, according to the u.s. census
bureau, which looked at families with children under 15 years old.
that’s up from 26% in 2002.

of those with kids under the age of 5, 20% of dads in 2010 were the primary caretaker.

many find that having one parent at home does have its advantages, especially as child care costs continue to climb.

couples do the math and realize that it makes more financial
sense for one spouse to stay home with the kids. and while it’s often
the woman who decides to drop out of the workforce, more men are taking on the responsibility of child care as well.

seeing this story compelled me to write about something i’ve been
thinking a lot about since the fall, which is the exciting and
well-executed reflection of this shifting reality in the domestic sphere
on television.

up all night has done a tremendous job of illuminating both
the universal challenges of new parenthood and those that are more
specific to new stay-at-home dads trying to create an identity for
themselves in a society that still genders child care and other domestic
work as “feminine” versus gender-neutral adjectives, such as nurturing
or supportive.

in up all night, will arnett plays chris brinkley, a former
lawyer and full-time stay-at-home dad to his new daughter, amy.
 christina applegate plays his wife, reagan, a driven producer for
the oprah-like television show ava.  maya rudolph wows as
the nutty and endearing ava alexander.  the show was based on the
experiences of its creator, emily spivey, and the trials of creating
work-life balance when she went back to working for snl after giving birth to a baby boy.

overall, chris handles the stresses of parenthood in stride.  he
brings amy to the studio to visit reagan and finds community with other
parents at early childhood education classes (see “mr bob’s toddler kaleidoscope“).

one of my favorite episodes is “working late and working it,”
where chris wants to get reagan back in the mood for love, but his
attempts still leave her slipping into maternity jeans after long days
at work.  chris looks to his new hip friend, reed (played by will forte of 30 rock and snl fame),
for advice.  chris doesn’t want to ask reagan directly to spice up
her look at home, so reed tells chris that if he wants to see sexy, he
needs to lead by example and “put sexy out there,” which leads to a
hilarious living room critique of chris’ wardrobe, underwear included.
the ever-enthusiastic chris ultimately fails when he “brings it on the
sexy front, but blows it on the subtle part” and pisses off reagan.

the study that cnn was discussing, however, does not include the
growing number of families with two fathers, where, inevitably, if one
parent stays home, it will be a father.  modern family, one of my favorite shows, features such a family with cameron, mitchell, and lily.  in this clip,
cam and mitch are discussing lily’s problem with biting people, and
snappy dialogue ensues after mitch suggests cam is to blame, because
he’s the one who is home with her all day.

one of my favorite episodes that centers around cam and mitch’s
parenting is season 1 episode 2, “the bicycle thief.”  they are
taking lily to her first toddler play group, and mitch is concerned that
they’ll be judged for being the only gay parents, so he asks cam to
tone it down a little.  naturally, cam trying to conceal his true
personality results in him being quite awkward, like when he says, “i’m
cameron, and i’m not currently working….which gives me more time to
grill and shoot baskets.”

ultimately, after another gay couple shows up, unconcerned about
seeming flamboyant, mitch loosens up, and even lets cam slap his own
butt during the “hello dance” so he can “make his horsey go.”

one reason that i’m glad i waited on this post was so that i could
mention another notable instance of men in child care on t.v.
 mid-season on new girl, unemployed winston is trying
to network at schmidt’s holiday work party.  he finds himself
talking to schmidt’s boss’s son, elvin, a precocious and notoriously
unfriendly boy. his mother is so impressed that elvin has taken a liking
to winston that she offers him a nannying job on the spot.  he
takes the position, although, eventually, elvin decides that winston
needs to push himself more towards his career goals and lies to his
mother about winston smoking pot to get him fired so he’ll have to find a
new job.  short lived, but still, it’s nice to see a man nanny on
t.v. for once.

hopefully, as time goes on and attitudes get more progressive,
representations of men in positions of caretaking and nurturing roles
will become more abundant and nuanced.  if we want to become more
functional as a society, promoting the idea that anyone, regardless of
sex, gender, or orientation, is capable of providing care, love, and
protection will serve us all greatly.

International Day of They: Resurrecting the Use of “They” as a Singular Pronoun

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You don't think "they" can be used as a singular pronoun? HAHAHAHA.

The Llama Will Show You

Thursday, May 3, 2012, is the first annual (hopefully) International
Day of They-ing. The day was created by Minnesotan linguist Ryan Txanson and consists (so far) entirely of a Facebook invitation.
The invitation is public and anyone with a Facebook account can join
the “event,” thereby pledging that on May 3rd, every time you refer to
someone in the 3rd person you will use the pronoun “they” (not “he” or
“she”). I encourage you to take part: whether you’re a gender outlaw or
just someone who hates the awkward (and exclusionary) phrase “he or
she,” you’ll find freedom in the warm embrace of singular “they.”

Why use “they” as a singular pronoun? Because it’s not gendered, it should be used whenever the gender of the person is unknown or
irrelevant. Here’s an example by Oscar Wilde: “Experience is the name
everyone gives to their mistakes.” (Notice that Wilde didn’t say “his
mistakes” or “his or her mistakes.”) For some of us, the International
Day of They (I think that’s more catchy than “They-ing”) is an
affirmation of the linguistic choices we already make, and for others of
us using “they” this way sounds odd or ungrammatical. While some style
guides like the Chicago Manual of Style still frown upon the singular use of “they” in formal writing, other style guides and grammar experts encourage such use (Grammar Girl, New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, and the Random House Dictionary).

But using “they” as a singular pronoun is nothing new. Historians
have found the word used this way as far back as the 14th century. And
it was not until the late 18th and early 19th centuries that grammarians
decided that singular “they” did not accord with the grammar rules that
they had borrowed from Latin and were applying to English. So, if on
May 3rd you use “they” as a singular, generic pronoun, you will be in
the good company of authors such as Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Thackeray,Whitman, and Dickens.

What is new is using “they” to refer to a known (not generic or hypothetical) individual in order to avoid the gendered pronouns “he” or “she.” This is the exciting and revolutionary part of the International Day of They!
It’s okay to say, for example, “Hollis got their first guitar when they
were eight.” Previous attempts to insert new non-gendered pronouns into
English (like “zie” and “hir”) have been made for hundreds of years,
and they have all failed. What is more likely to succeed is the
expansion of the existing “they” to meet the needs of gender-neutral
language. How do we change language and then push those changes into the
mainstream? Use. We have to use it the way we want it to be. And then
we have to keep using it to establish credibility and authority.

For me the International Day of They is personal (and personally
validating); “They”/ “Their”/ “Them”/ “Themself” are my preferred gender
pronouns (PGPs). I will be making a point on May 3rd to use “they” for all
3rd persons, both generic and specific. Please join me. And if you’re
skeptical about the ability to change something so entrenched in
language as pronouns, I ask you, when was the last time you used “thy,”
“thee,” or “thou”?