Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Welcome. More than 36 years ago, gay men in New York City revolted at yet another gay-bar raid in the endless police harassment homosexuals endured in those days, and the Stonewall Riots gave rise to a more aggressive gay-rights movement. That movement has run out of steam and become an actual enemy of gay men today. We need to fix that.
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Two months before Stonewall, I established Homosexuals Intransigent! as a student organization at City College of the City University of New York, and when the Riots occurred I was at a summer session in California trying to establish chapters of that organization while there. But summer sessions (one at Long Beach State, the other at San Francisco State) weren't long enuf to accomplish that. The Stonewall Riots a continent away did, however, cause the creation of new gay student organizations on those campuses later.
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I missed the Riots, tho I had been a regular customer of the Stonewall, only because I was in California at the time. But when I returned, I became intimately involved with the fervent of the era. I participated in the interorganizational conference that produced the plan to commemorate the Stonewall Riots widely each year, and joined the committee that organized the first March. During the planning for that March, we decided to encourage all New York organizations to hold special events the weekend of the March to draw more people in and make their participation more memorable. We wanted an all-encompassing term for that weekend of events. "Gay Power Weekend" was the first suggestion. I didn't like that. It seemed too militant, negative, and imitative of "Black Power", then very much in people's minds. I suggested "Gay Pride Weekend" instead. That suggestion was immediately adopted, without discussion. And that is why "Gay Pride" is so prominent a term today.
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Alas, "Gay Pride" is only a slogan, not a reality. Everywhere in the gay world we see shame and self-destructive behavior arisen from shame and confusion. The kinds of analytical thinking and writing that characterized some of the groups in the immediate post-Stonewall era — in publications as diverse as my own organization's mimeographed newsletter, then magazine, and Boston's Fag Rag — have vanished, replaced by mindless drivel in glossy commercial magazines devoted to guiding people to various bars and businesses. The editorial content of these publications is, for the most part, of the most disgustingly maladjusted sorts, with catty gossip and camp everywhere. Stereotypical effeminates alternate with beautifully chiseled bodies. Little concern is shown for the minds inside those bodies, nor the quality of relationships between the men who embrace those bodies.
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Everywhere homosexuality is falsified and feminized. Gay men are told over and over that they are kind of like women, and must be with women, love women — especially lesbians — and give over their entire lives (except for the few hours a week they might actually spend in sexual activity with men), to lesbifeminism and identification with our "lesbian sisters". We must embrace gender confusion and pretend that men who dress in women's clothing and want their genitals chopped off and a slit cut in their crotch are "women trapped in the body of a man" — as tho that is actually possible rather than pure madness. We are constantly assailed by suggestions, from within our own community, that gay is not really manly and that we are some kind of intersex! With such vile crap circulating endlessly in our own media, who needs enemy propaganda from the Religious Right?
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I intend this blog to bring an aggressive male perspective to specific gay-related issues that arise in the news or that I see in gay media. I hope to counter some of the destructive garbage that gay men are constantly told, so they can assert their manhood and break free.
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This blog is intended for gay men. Other people have other things to read. Let them mind their own business so we can mind ours.
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If you have issues you'd like me to address, please write me at MrGayPride@aol.com. I must warn you, however, that I will not tolerate disrespect. Gay men need to respect each other, and as long as observations are offered in respectful terms, we can communicate and possibly learn from each other. Gay men can learn to be gay only from other gay men. And a lot of men have a lot to learn.
+
Two months before Stonewall, I established Homosexuals Intransigent! as a student organization at City College of the City University of New York, and when the Riots occurred I was at a summer session in California trying to establish chapters of that organization while there. But summer sessions (one at Long Beach State, the other at San Francisco State) weren't long enuf to accomplish that. The Stonewall Riots a continent away did, however, cause the creation of new gay student organizations on those campuses later.
+
I missed the Riots, tho I had been a regular customer of the Stonewall, only because I was in California at the time. But when I returned, I became intimately involved with the fervent of the era. I participated in the interorganizational conference that produced the plan to commemorate the Stonewall Riots widely each year, and joined the committee that organized the first March. During the planning for that March, we decided to encourage all New York organizations to hold special events the weekend of the March to draw more people in and make their participation more memorable. We wanted an all-encompassing term for that weekend of events. "Gay Power Weekend" was the first suggestion. I didn't like that. It seemed too militant, negative, and imitative of "Black Power", then very much in people's minds. I suggested "Gay Pride Weekend" instead. That suggestion was immediately adopted, without discussion. And that is why "Gay Pride" is so prominent a term today.
+
Alas, "Gay Pride" is only a slogan, not a reality. Everywhere in the gay world we see shame and self-destructive behavior arisen from shame and confusion. The kinds of analytical thinking and writing that characterized some of the groups in the immediate post-Stonewall era — in publications as diverse as my own organization's mimeographed newsletter, then magazine, and Boston's Fag Rag — have vanished, replaced by mindless drivel in glossy commercial magazines devoted to guiding people to various bars and businesses. The editorial content of these publications is, for the most part, of the most disgustingly maladjusted sorts, with catty gossip and camp everywhere. Stereotypical effeminates alternate with beautifully chiseled bodies. Little concern is shown for the minds inside those bodies, nor the quality of relationships between the men who embrace those bodies.
+
Everywhere homosexuality is falsified and feminized. Gay men are told over and over that they are kind of like women, and must be with women, love women — especially lesbians — and give over their entire lives (except for the few hours a week they might actually spend in sexual activity with men), to lesbifeminism and identification with our "lesbian sisters". We must embrace gender confusion and pretend that men who dress in women's clothing and want their genitals chopped off and a slit cut in their crotch are "women trapped in the body of a man" — as tho that is actually possible rather than pure madness. We are constantly assailed by suggestions, from within our own community, that gay is not really manly and that we are some kind of intersex! With such vile crap circulating endlessly in our own media, who needs enemy propaganda from the Religious Right?
+
I intend this blog to bring an aggressive male perspective to specific gay-related issues that arise in the news or that I see in gay media. I hope to counter some of the destructive garbage that gay men are constantly told, so they can assert their manhood and break free.
+
This blog is intended for gay men. Other people have other things to read. Let them mind their own business so we can mind ours.
+
If you have issues you'd like me to address, please write me at MrGayPride@aol.com. I must warn you, however, that I will not tolerate disrespect. Gay men need to respect each other, and as long as observations are offered in respectful terms, we can communicate and possibly learn from each other. Gay men can learn to be gay only from other gay men. And a lot of men have a lot to learn.
