The Thrill of Queer Scholarship

There is something extremely thrilling about the research I am currently undertaking on drag kings for my thesis, which is the capstone experience of my baccalaureate education in gender studies.  Since returning to school to complete my B.A., all of my research has been relatively trying, primarily because I have consistently chosen to examine the largely unexamined, ie, LGBTQ, non-white, and/or anti-capitalist individuals and communities.

Angela Davis' autobiography is out of print; I had to buy it.  The library didn't have a copy of The Transgender Studies Reader; I borrowed it from a friend.  One of the best queer scholarly journals is British; I've begged access from professors who are also gracious friends and who have access to better resourced libraries than I do.  In other words, my research on queer subjects has necessarily reflected attributes of many queer communities: communal pooling of resources, resilience in the face of frustration, crafting a voice for myself and my communities from a little of this and a dash of that and heaping scoops of moxy, audacity, and pride.

Somehow, this research on drag kings has been easier.  In fact, it's ben so much easier that it's harder:  I have a bumper crop of scholarly articles and theoretical frameworks, so much so that I have to be extremely specific in my focus in order to keep to twenty five to thirty pages.  This is before I have begun logging and transcribing the footage that I captured, with the tireless efforts of my wonderful friend Mel, at the twelfth annual International Drag King Extravaganza.  I have yet to set foot in an archive to unearth historical artifacts; time constraints will not allow me to do so.

In addition, the relatively small of queer communities puts lots of people within my reach whose straight counterparts I would be unlikely to have access to.  What do I mean by unusual access?  I mean that my phone buzzes at a half past midnight and one of the theorists upon whom my work is based has texted me to say we should make a date to discuss my work.  Similarly, the relative youth of a (vaguely) cohesive set of LGBT cultures in America, essentially post-Stonewall, means that many of the founders are still alive or, at least on film and very much remembered by the adults and elders of my communities.

There is another dimension of joy in my scholarship, and that is style in which I am finding some of the articles written.  There is an infusion of personal narrative directly into scholarly examination.  Indeed, it was a suggestion in the feminist research book that accompanied the course that it can be a feminist project to assert new feminist epistemologies and methodologies, including the location of the scholar in the scholarship, rather than posing as an objective observer as in modern scientific experimentation.  I had jokingly asked my Twitter followers whether I could refer to a theorist by first name in my thesis since I knew her personally; the answer was a clear "no."  I further challenged that this was a thesis on drag, that irreverence should reflect in the style of the writing as well as the subject, and that I could turn the paper in with glitter in the cover to make this clear.  Indeed, I believe that a queering of the academic style could be valuable to its overall purpose, which is to amplify the voices of those who are often culturally, and especially legally, voiceless in society.

One final joy: reading about people that I have seen perform as formative in drag communities and culture.  I can take or leave Hollywood stars; boutique celebrities who perform on small stages and are written up in scholarly journals make me swoon.

My photo taken at IDKE XII: Gender Justice by Puppet L'Artist.

Lauren, Katherine, Lana too: On Channeling Glamour

I met Sarah Green, of the band Dangerous Ponies, a while back when we both performed at QueerChannel to benefit The Attic Youth Center here in Philadelphia.  I performed as a drag king that night, complete with flannel and a false mustache, but was headed out to the Bar AIDS fundraiser afterwards in full fabulosity - AKA a twenty four inch lime waist cincher with rhinestones and paillettes.  Sarah complimented my cincher, I was drawn to her zebra jumpsuit, and magic happened.

As it turned out, Sarah was producing her second annual genderqueer calendar and looking for models.  I was familiar with the calendar from the previous year and was excited to work with her.  We met at my favorite local coffee shop, One Shot in Northern Liberties, and talked art, careers, Dangerous Ponies' touring schedule and amazing two-tune purple tour van, and my inspirations for our upcoming photo shoot together.  My goal was to evoke and create a post-modern, genderqueer homage to Bettie Page.  One of the most iconic things about Bettie was her luxurious black hair and.  However, in my drag and genderfuck performance I do not wear wigs and do not perform "realness," as it's referred to in drag circles.  My goal is not to pass convincingly as female bodied, but rather to disrupt and deconstruct the gender binary by a conscious mixing of gender signals and signifiers.

This meant that to capture Bettie's spirit I was going to have to nail the poses and the energy.  All of our initial shots were on a sofa, posed after a few iconic pictures of her, including some with a riding crop, as Bettie created some of the earliest and best known images of bondage and BDSM.  Interestingly, I haven't seen any of these photos yet since the Ponies are touring and Sarah's editing time is slim.  After we did some of the classic poses, we got me up off the sofa and channeling my inner glamourous femme queen.  This is what we've come up with so far:

The first two pictures that went up on Sarah's blog were ones where she had played with some color filters.

  In the first I think I look very send-up of a 50's house wife who has just burnt the toast and is trying to look innocent and a little dumb.  Also, though I love the color on this, the filter (or perhaps just the lighting) did substantially change the color of the lipstick away from the very classic red that I choose. Moot, though, because this wasn't a classic Bettie pose anyway.

The color from the second is very 70's Playboy, which I love in terms of the look, and is interesting in terms of further muddling signifiers, because the pose and the outfit are not at all of that era.

On the other hand, the picture that Sarah most recently posted in an album previewing the entire calendar put me very much in mind of Marilyn Monroe as photographed my Richard Avedon. It's not exact (since I wasn't going for that look) but the way it came out is stunning, and I give all of the credit to Sarah for being such a great director from behind the camera.   All I can say is that it's absolutely stunning, and I could not be more in love.

The Cultural Incongruence of Queer Men Playing Contact Sports

Today I had a callback for a print ad I'd initially auditioned for on Saturday. The spot is an LGBT focused ad for AMTRAK and they are casting LGBT models. Since they already had four pictures of me and a resume, I figured this was the point at which I was going to have to be handsome and charming and win over casting directors on the spot, and I was right.

The instructions were something like “OK, come right here and stand on this mark. State your name....OK Rudy, and why don't you tell us one interesting fact about yourself.” There was a momentary beat, probably imperceptible to them, when I had no idea what I could say to put my best foot forward and engage them. Then, without any input from my conscious mind, my mouth was off and running.

“Well, I played rugby in college. Nobody that knew me before or after could ever really believe it. Here it is, one of the most violent contact sports in the world, and I'm a keep the peace kind of guy.” I'm not sure how much I said before they started asking questions, or how many questions were asked, but I talked about being bigger than, about the stress relief, about how Wednesday hitting practices left you even more exhausted and blissful than the games themselves.

Everybody seemed quite pleased and every word flowed intuitively and I barely remember what I said. This is the same as any good stiff arm did on the pitch, or any performance does now when I act – when it's good I'm only half aware of what's going on, half observer to my own actions and just running on autopilot. That's great, and my feeling that they'd find the idea of me as a rugger both humorous and charming was dead on. This was immediately after I confirmed I was auditioning for one of the gay roles. So what is it about queer men in contact sports that seems incongruous with what these athletes should be like?

This is a thought that has been on my mind a lot lately. I have recently re-enrolled at TCNJ, the school where I began my undergraduate degree and played rugby for four years, serving as the team treasurer for three. Running late to class one day, I was texting my friend Inessa, who also played rugby and is currently finishing graduate school there. She sent two of the girls from the current team to pick me up from the train station so I could get to class on time. Both were gay and one I knew from an Alumni Day game a few years back. They were describing how the women's team, mostly straight by the time I graduated, was once again a hotbed of lesbian curiosity and coming-outs. How about the guys team, I asked? To the best of our combined knowledge, there has never been an out queer men's rugby player before or after me.

This fall, it will have been eight years since I started my degree at TCNJ. The team was around at least two years before I got there, maybe even three or four. How is it that a rugby team, which has often been able to address full A and B sides with subs, so that'd be at least forty four men on the roster at any given time – how have I been the only one in a decade or more?

I wasn't out from the start of my freshman year; I wouldn't have even described my sexuality then as I do now, per se, though I was certainly under no illusions of being straight. It simply never occurred to me that it would be a problem that I wasn't. There were things that kept me quiet about my sexuality though. The largest was that, right out of high school I was socially awkward and a good sixty pounds heavier than I am now. For whatever reason my eyes didn't cooperate with contacts at the time, so I played blind. I wanted to wait and get better, lest I prove that stereotype about queer men being effeminate and unathletic.

Sadly, by the time I got in great shape, I also got mono right before school started and was benched for the competitive season of my senior year. Incidentally, we had, since we were a club sport and not NCAA regulated, won the D II champions the year before (having moved into D II either before or right around the time I started; TCNJ is a D III school), moved into D I that fall and were playing schools like U Del and Princeton. There has never, to this day, been a greater disappointment in my life than being benched that season.

The team was not entirely without homophobia, but by the time I was a junior I was putting the kibosh on homophobic language on the pitch (what little there was) and as a team leader, I was mostly respected. Additionally, other players whom I respected deeply began policing rookies for homophobic remarks and were extremely supportive of me, both when I was obviously queer but not talking about it (and I never dated so I never had anything to either talk about or hide, really) and then when it was official, in the form of being on my Facebook page.

This brings me to a number of questions. How to we get all teams to be as cool as mine? Certainly being a liberal education school in New Jersey helped. Once the token queer player graduates, how do you maintain that lack of homophobia, so new players will find a queer positive space? I remember tabling for rugby and trying to get anybody who gave us more than a cursory glance to at least come out to a practice. We told them about the body diversity on the team and the diversity of different sports that ruggers had played in high school, and those, like me, who were simply couch potatoes. There was one kid who read as very effeminate and gay and a team mate joined me in encouraging him to come out to a practice.

Would this have happened without me? Does this happen now? It cracked everybody up that I, the somewhat moderately butch but just as often joyfully feminine man could play rugby, but I didn't hit any less hard or take any less pride in my war wounds than anybody else. Why do we see people as static, or believe that masculinity in every moment is needed to perform feats of physical strength and brutality for eighty minutes on a Saturday?

And the big question is, today, now, this moment, as an athlete and an activist – what can I do to help make college athletics, especially contact sports like rugby that put a premium on masculinity, be inviting spaces for queer participants? Not every queer would-be rugger is as lucky as I.

Sucking Cock is Gay; Rhinestones are Fabulous (Yes Blanche, There's a Difference)

Earlier this week, David Badash over at The New Civil Rights Movement responded to Chelsea Handler's tweet "You say 'Ice Dancing,' I say 'Gay.'"  Initially I found the comment mildly amusing, if bland and a bit been-there-done-that.  On the other, I think David makes a very valid point that it reinforces a stereotype.  Personally, I love a politically incorrect comedian.   George Carlin is a god in my book, and I have paid good money to have Lisa Lamponelli personally address me as a "cheap Jew bastard cunt faggot.  God Bless!"  I thought it was hilarious and, in the context of meeting her, getting her autograph and seeing her show, one can see that she goes after every possible sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity and religion that commonly experiences discrimination and makes a joke out of it.  That kind of humor isn't for everybody, but I think it's valuable because it's easiest to break down difficult stereotypes laughing at how ridiculous they are.  So there we have our first balancing act to consider: in repeating a stereotype, does the comedian do so in a context and to an audience that allows us to laugh it away, or is it being reinforced?  I think Ms. Handler's comment falls into the latter category.

When I look at what's being reinforced, my concern is not primarily that this is casting all gay men as effeminate. Rather, I'm concerned that we are continually reinforcing the notion that there is en essential gay quality; I am equally concerned when there is an essentialist view of any sex, gender, sexuality, race, etc.  Because these are largely identities we are born and socialized into, people begin to believe that being born gay means you burst through the womb in high heels doing a baton routine and belting out Judy Garland tunes or that being born a woman or a lesbian or a black lesbian or anything else makes a statement that our actions are inherent to our identity, and every other person of that identity.  Any essentialist view of identity is troubling on multiple levels.  On the macro level, it turns any group into a monolithic one, with identical or near identical experiences.  This is simply not true.

On the individual level, an essentialist view of sex, gender and sexuality has very negative repercussions.  Take for example the notion that there is some essential and inviolable characteristic that makes one a woman.  Any chromosomal or biological identity fails this test.  There are women born with only one X chromosome, and women born XY where the SRY masculinization gene on the Y chromosome is missing or inactive.  Not all women menstruate or give birth.  Sexual identity doesn't make a women either; not all women have sex with men.  Traditional femininity doesn't make a woman as women exist all over the spectrum of femininity and masculinity and some transcend the spectrum entirely; they make it three dimensional, spherical, polymorphous and continually evolving.  Even an essentialist view that, if nothing else, all women are born with a vagina is invalidated by transsexual women who are not, in fact, born with a biological female sex.  Feminists with an essentialist view of female/woman identity are one more voice against trans women, denying them safe spaces, access to healthcare, and flat out robbing them of their humanity and making it OK for them, and especially trans women of color, to be proportionally the most attacked and killed in hate crimes of any group in America.  In other words, dismantling essentialist identity, whether you use such fancy phrases or not, is not just an Ivory Tower exercise for the privileged attendees of liberal arts universities.  It can literally be a matter of life and death.

So then, do we really believe that there is an essential experience of being a gay man?  It is undoubtedly true that when you compare gay men to straight men that more of us like show tunes or get excited about Johnny Weir's performance to Lady Gaga's Poker Face.  Even my friends and I are in the habit of, after a conversation about such things adding the addendum "wow, I'm extra gay today," or perhaps adding the hashtag #bigolmo to a tweet.  Yet here I am arguing that there is no essential femininity or other attribute that sets us apart from straight men.

So to clarify, as the title says: I'm gay cause I'll suck a dick like it's the last lollipop smuggled into fat camp.  I'm queer because I'm weird and politically radical and I'm not a six on the Kinsey scale - there are so many hot queers out there and I hardly think that I'd be disinclined to sleep with them just because of their genitalia, or the fact that their genitals have been reshaped by hormones or surgery, or because they don't fit some sexual or gender binary which, hello, is totally made the hell up!  And finally, I'm fabulous because, well, I mean, have you seen me in a corset?  Or a leather jockstrap?  Or just jeans and a t-shirt.  Have you seen me discuss feminist theories as a way of understanding racial discrimination or did you know that I've set my broken nose with a spoon and duct tape?  Yeah, I'm MacGyver like that.  And I'm fucking fabulous day in and day out, and when I'm not feeling fabulous I do pushups or go for a bike ride or give my self a spa day until I'm bringing my A-game in fabulosity again.

Is this because I'm queer?  Partly, largely, but it's not an essential part of me.  It is my reaction to being a big old queen who was scared of boys growing up.  I don't know which came first for sure, but I think that even that was a reaction to a negative experience and not something I was born feeling.  It was an inequality between the sexes that pissed me off from the start, and it was one day in first or second grade that, as usual, the boys were off terrorizing the girls during recess and I was running with the girls, making sure nobody bothered my best friend Meghan.  At some point I had that National Geographic African steppe documentary experience of being prey separated from the herd.  I was the gazelle and he was the hyena, pinning me down, calling me a faggot, telling me I had to take the boy's side and that he was going to punch me if I didn't.  Channeling some dignified resistors of tyranny from the collective unconscious, I straight up brought my Ghandi/King/hunger striking suffragette energy and just lay there silent, refusing to acknowledge or bow to his threats.  My non-violent, silent protest worked and I wasn't bothered again.

So what's the theory?  The theory is that we are not essentially, any of us, queer or not, masculine or feminine or football players or chorus members.  We are born with a personality, and our identity and our actions are shaped by how the world treats us.  I know from the age of four that I was different even though I couldn't verbalize how, and so I was sometimes abused.  Largely I was not; I still had white male privilege and spent most of my formative years in a liberal New Jersey town; that coupled with my personal tendency towards diffusing tension and being extraordinarily trustworthy and non-threatening spared me from the abuse that many other queer boys experience.  Still, being weird and different gave me the liberty to try on more identities outside of what men are supposed to be.  I learned, over many years, that there was no incongruence in baking, playing rugby, sleeping with men, listening to AC/DC and Madonna on the same playlist and wearing heels if I damn well felt like it.  My response to being a queer man in a queer-unfriendly and queer-terrorizing world, like many but not all, was to explore all of the ways I could be a human and sometimes those behaviors stray far into the zone of stereotype.  When I do so, I'm not "acting gay," I'm just being me in a way that makes sense in the world I live in.

One more thought before I leave you lovelies to digest that bit of queer theory and get your Friday night outfits picked out:  It is essential that we take down such stereotypical statements at their root, as we have done here.  Calling out stereotypes without calling out their roots is treating the symptom without addressing the disease; it's removing a tumor without doing the biopsy to see if the disease has become systemic and what it is affecting most deeply.  Often times when we take down a gay stereotype we end up reinforcing homophobia and patriarchy.  (An aside: I don't feel that David's blog did this at all, but many do.)  Instead of addressing the troublesome concept of an essentialist view of queer sexuality, we often see queer men of a more masculine variety, whether than gender presentation is sincere or an attempt to mollify the homophobic, but more specifically effeminate/queen/"stereotypical"/patriarchy-challenging homophobic masses, distance themselves as far from the stereotype as possible.  Instead of affirming that this is one of many valid queer identities, they become apologists to the straight world for such men behaving the way they do or even existing.


I know this is true because once upon a (seriously deluded) time I thought I could be a bad, butch rugby player, the non-stereotypical gay man who sneaked in the back door of patriarchy (no anal sex pun intended, I swear, you guys) and demonstrated that no, we're not all "like that," we're just the same as you, so it's about time we got our freaking equal rights.  The reality is not all gay or straight or black or Jewish or whatever men are all like anything.  We're people, not 32 flavors at Baskin Robins that all stay in separate tubs. When we tackle stereotypes it's important that we honor all of the members of our community, and not just the ones that are the scrubbed and  polished version of what we perceive a queer man or woman to be, ready to be the non-threatening, status quo-maintaining and wholly  ineffective next face of the queer community.  Furthermore, by dismantling the idea that there is an essential gay behavior or set of likes and dislike, we honor the straight men unfairly affected by homophobia, straight men who drop out of dance classes and glee club because those things are not honored by society as being legitimate straight male identities.  Remember, homophobia and it's evil progenitor patriarchy hurt us all.

I want to wear the pants in the family. And the stilettos.

While wandering my apartment trying to get into a rather dry history book outlining women in Asia in just a few hundred pages (for the world's largest continent with incredibly diverse languages, cultures, religions and so on mind you) I tended to get, well distracted.  I need to go in depth, to analyze or synthesize theory based on primary and secondary sources, to see the art.  A very factual primer is not useful to me, although when I finally hit on some topics I was a little more familiar with, as well as interested in (in this case various myths about women, including the story of Sita from the Ramayana) my synapses started firing.

This is difficult.  For me, intellectual excitement is somewhat akin to firing a shotgun.  It's an enormous explosion of force that tends to move outward rapidly and in a number of different directions simultaneously.  I was wondering if I could connect a recent, animated film retelling of the Ramayana, the fabulous and incomparable "Sita Sings the Blues," to various ancient iterations of the story.  I was wondering how I could expand or contract my thesis, depending on the amount of primary sources and scholarly research available, to compare the telling and retelling religious and/or secular stories with women as central characters and how they changed over time both with and against society's shifting interpretation of women's roles; additionally it might be possible parallel this with the worship of various incarnations of Maha Davi (the feminine Divine) in Hindu culture.  I suppose comparative analysis across other religions on the Indian subcontinent could be done, although frankly Buddhism, Islam and Jainism neither speak to me or interest me in quiet the same way as Hindu (with the exception of art and architecture in the Islam Mogul dynasty) and I only have 10-12 pages, not a damn book, so I should keep this narrow and deep rather than broad and cursory.

Anyway, it was around the time that I was walking in circles, reading further in my text and reading it with an East Tennessee accent, by the way, to continually hone that for my acting class, that I came up with another idea (hence the shotgun theory of my neural pathways).  Just to paint the picture, I'd just finished a litre of black tea (hellloooooo over caffeinated), was boiling water for another litre of green, was wearing my rugby jersey, track pants and some secondhand high heel shoes from Philly AIDS Thrift and eating a banana.  Then it came in a flash: between Tony award winning shows and time I spent with my family, I'd be writing an analysis on queering family in the 21st century.  It will be entitled "I want to wear the pants in this family.  And the stilettos.  Queering community, child rearing and gender roles in an non-traditionally constructed modern family."

Tah-dah, that's my brain on caffeine.  That's a peek into my thesis for this semester, and if you have resources, by all means, please direct me to them.  And that's a peek at my life, I think/hope, in 2025.

Love ya, mean it!
xoxo Pistol

Why are pornbots so heteronormative?

I'm feeling humored about this, but also curious in an anthropology and psychology sort of way - none of the porn emails that end up in my spambox in Gmail are ever gay or bi or queer in any way.  Ditto the porn bots on Twitter up until a few days ago.  Since then two bots with some variation on the handle "Gay Live" have followed me, most likely because I used a keyword like "fag" in one of my tweets and they automatically added me.  However, this is literally the first time in well over ten years on the internet that gay porn was been advertised to me via spam.  Doesn't this seem odd to you?

The way I see it, we live in a capitalist culture and anything that can be effectively sold through advertising will be.  Obviously all of those spam bots and emails selling porn to straight men generate enough capital to make them worth sending.  Therefore the possibilities are:

1) Queer men don't consume pornography and therefore we aren't marketed to in this way.
2) Queer men consume a comparable amount of pornography compared to straight men, but are less likely to find it through spam advertising.

Clearly we're going with option two.  So then the next question is are we an untapped market to this style of advertising, or are we less responsive to it.  Again, I'm going with the latter.  The more interesting question is, why?  I have my theories. 

As queers, we have to think a lot more about our sexuality in general.  We're already deviating from one of the most deeply entrenched normative values of society, and as a result we delve into and explore various facets of our sexuality more, can articulate our desires and kninks, and have less (or no) shame about them.  Our leather daddies march with their collared boys in Pride parades just as respectably as drag queens, activist groups, knitting groups and queer churches.  And why shouldn't they?  Sex and sexuality is a beautiful part of life that doesn't need to be hidden, but you sure as hell wouldn't know it talking to most straight Americans, doubly so if they live in the 'burbs, attend church regularly, etc., etc.  I think that porn bots and porn spam are for Midwestern accountants who keep their dicks in Mason jars under the sink and can't imagine a world where your Saturday errands are grocceries, returning library books, and stopping off for a new butt plug and some hardcore pornography.

Goddamn, it's good to be a faggot.  Now if I can just permanently block these BritneyFuckedVid bots on Twitter, I'll be set!

This Week in Fabulosity

Thursday - I interviewed with my favorite Philly arts org, First Person Arts, for an internship.  I'm not sure yet when I'll start with them but I really look forward to picking up a whole new set of skills and learning about the behind the scenes work of event production, contract writing and all of the nitty-gritty of making art happen.  More on that as it unfolds!  

Saturday - An almost indescribably amazing trip with my flatmate and fabulous sex blogger Sarcastabitch to see Justin Bond and the Pixie Harlots perform their original show "Christmas Spells," based on the short story "Dixie Belle" by Kate Bornstein.  Now I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking, Pistol, is it possible for you to talk about fabulosity without mentioning Justin AND Kate?  Well, I suppose it is, but why try?  I want to see great art, they make great art, and they  often collaborate to make and/or present it together.  Who can argue with that?

In addition to telling a new gender-bent Huck Finn story the way the only such an assemblage of artists and queens can, we were treated to:

• solo and ensemble  performances of holiday songs, written by artists from The Gossip to Richard Carpenter to Irving Berlin
• Justin performing songs from his EP "Pink Slip,"
• Justin's outrageous tales and incomparable, fucked-up humor.  Try on for size this punchline from one notable (true) story: "And when they finally caught him and asked him why he had been punching these babies he answered, 'they were stealing my glamour!'"  

With tears rolling down my cheeks, I was grateful that Sarcatabitch uses only high end makeup and that my waterproof mascara was not running.

In addition to the sheer fabulosity of Justin's high heels and the hot and hairy Pixie Harlots in jockstraps and fishnets and glitter (well all of my favorite pixies were hairy anyway), I played another round of "It's a Small, Queer World."  I not only spotted a recent Philly to NYC transplanted Faerie friend, but also noticed that Sean Kennedy, previously known to me only via his Twitter stream, was tweeting from the same theater as I!  After some online coordination and at least one follower breathlessly waiting to see whether we'd find each other in the crowd, we met up and headed out to Yaffa Cafe for some post show food.  (Why yes, I was just there for breakfast last week with Kate.  It seems queer writers and creamy hummus go together like Lady Gaga and fake blood soaked avant garde costumes.)

Somewhere in transit, a Faerie whispered in my ear (with a little help from text messaging) "Wanna come to Justin's?"  Bless her heart, Sarcastabitch and her short little legs managed to keep up with my dead sprint from Yaffa to the after party, catching her breath as I grabbed some ale because I was NOT showing up to Mx Bond's empty handed!  We arrived shortly before the Pixie Harlots had to make their way out to Brooklyn for a second performance and I was surely pleased to make their acquaintance. 

Machine is just as sweet as pie and an excellent conversationalist to boot; PamperZ confirmed what a queen told me on Halloween about applying glitter to one's lips and added the essential information of how to remove said glitter!  So yes, the party was great. A performance artist and indie film actor here, Mx Bond's favorite rockstar there, Faeries and general faggotry abound.  The room represented ten times more artistic achievement than your standard soiree, yet without one iota of the pretension.  AKA, my personal heaven.

Sunday - My dear friend, mentor and Faerie elder Chris Bartlett and his gay history wiki project were written up in the New York Times.  In fact, my understanding is that this was on the front page of the style section of the print edition.  I am so proud and excited of and for Chris and his work.  I look forward to how the wiki will grow and eventually go viral over time.

With love and fabulosity, and body glitter adorning body hair,
xoxo

Rafe on the importance of queer bookstores in his life

I met my Friend Rafe through Twitter and appropriate to our queer/nerd bond, first met him in person at Giovanni's Room.  When I first heard that they were in need of fund raising events I had no idea that a hopefull tweet about Kate Bornstein doing a reading for them would not only be read by her, but that plans would start being laid that same day.  It was several months later that Rafe and I connected in person at her reading there.  

He recently wrote a great blog about the importance of queer bookstores, and I'm hoping he'll later guest blog here with some other fantastic folks about their favorite LGBTQ reading materials.  Here's what he had to say:

Sometimes the queer bookstores are the only place a kid can go and find a book about other people who are the same kind of freak and weirdo. The same kind of queer. Sometimes a person struggles to find community, and can’t, but at least there are books. I was not a very good lesbian, ever, but I was damn glad to have Rubyfruit Jungle and The Revolution of Little Girls, People Like Us, and the ever-invaluable Dykes to Watch Out For series. Without being able to go to the queer bookstores in Denver, Albuquerque, and, yes, Washington DC during my late teens and early 20s, I don’t know what I would have done. And now, trying to find trans references… Yeah.  So help your independent stores.

Read the rest of the blog here.

Another One Bites the Dust - Queer Bookstores Fading Fast

I was extremely disappointed to read that Lambda Rising, a queer bookstore with two locations serving LGBTQ communities in Washington DC and Rehoboth Beach, DE, will be closing its doors.  This comes less than a year against the closing of the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in NYC, then the oldest independent queer bookstore in the nation.  However, this blog is not intended to be a lament, but rather a call to action.

Here in Philadelphia, we still have Giovanni's Room.  While I'm sure they were suffering due to the economy and the decline in print media just like everyone else, Giovanni's Room has been especially hard hit this year because they've had to replace a structural at a cost of over $50,000.  They continue to host a variety of fund raisers, but I intend to use this blog, other blogs, Twitter and our combined social networks to keep them open.  They have served the LGBTQ population of the Philadelphia region for decades and are one of the only independent, queer bookstores left on the East coast.  Here's how we're going to pitch in together:

1.  I'm going to post three books below that I really love, with links to purchase them directly from Giovanni's Room online.

2. I am asking all queer & ally bloggers, Twitterers, activists and artists to help me out and do the same.  Ideally, to reach the most people, I would like you to guest blog here and post a link it on your blog/Twitter.  We will have network overlap, but you'll also likely gain new audience posting here.  The format should be: A) Introduce yourself and a 2-3 sentence plug for your current show, project, your blog, whatever B) Your 3-5 favorite queer books, hyperlinked to be purchased directly online from Giovanni's Room.  Alternately, if it's not something they usually carry, link to their contact info and let the readers know that they can special order pretty much anything at all, even if it's not queer related!

3. Spread this blog and all the subsequent blogs in the series every way you can.  Email it to friends and family, put the books on your wish list if you are one of the many people celebrating an upcoming gift-giving winter holiday, tweet about it, etc.

Without further ado, here are my three recommendations.  In a nod to Twitter's #transtuesday, all three books are trans or genderqueer related.  Click on the titles to buy them online from Giovanni's Room!

1.  GENDERqUEER - This is a fantastic anthology edited by Joan Nestle, Clare Howell, and Riki Wilchins.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, this book was a huge stepping stone for me in understanding gender.  The arrangement of stories, essays and interviews represents a diverse culture within the genderqueer, transgender and transsexual communities and is a great place to start examining gender in small bites, as it were.

2. Girls will be Boys will be Girls will Be... - This delightful queer coloring book is appropriate for kids, adults and tribal elders aged 2 to 102 and was created by Jacinta Bunnell and Irit Reinheimer.  Along with a genderqueer short story, each page has one illustrated statement such as "Stanley Spends Superbowl Sunday Sewing Slacks," and "Enough about our forefathers, let's learn about some revolutionary women," with an (adorable) accompanying illustration. I cannot pick up this book without smiling.

3.  Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us - By Kate Bornstein, this is a staple of trans writing, and a great book on gender overall.  If you can put this one down without learning something new, congratulations, you must already have written your doctoral dissertation in post modern gender theory!  Pass go and collect $200!  In all seriousness, Kate is an outstanding author, performer and mentor.  You wouldn't be hard pressed to find people in the trans community who count this book as the first time they saw their reflection in someone else's experience, or even the thing that facilitated their transition.

If you are interested in writing a blog to help Giovanni's Room and are willing to cross-post here, please contact me. jrudyflesher[at]gmail[dot]com.

With love and hope for our community, and supporting the queer spaces that support us. xoxo

UPDATE: Want to share this on Twitter?  Simply copy and paste this text and tweet away: RT @njrugger45 Another one bites the dust. The demise of queer bookstores & how to save Giovanni's Room http://tinyurl.com/ygjcp6j

This Week in Fabulosity

Tuesday - My fellow actors at the Ward Studio in both Philadelphia and New York agreed to extend our semester of Mesiner Technique II by a day in order to do a joint showcase of our work for one another, performing at the new studio space at 150 West 28th Street in New York. My classmate Brandon and I performed a scene from the Odd Couple and I was (perhaps obviously) cast as Felix Unger. I remember the first time we worked through the scene and classmates were really laughing and I couldn't believe it because while I knew the script read as comedy, all I could feel acting it was anger and frustration at bickering with my juvenile, slovenly room mate. In that scene I gained a better appreciation of humor and why it need not and should not be funny to the people performing. It was great to do it in NY with a (partially) fresh audience who didn't know the jokes and gags because once again I got to experience that weird parallel of being angry Felix, but also having some consciousness as myself hearing big laughs and knowing that I was entertaining my audience. A most excellent feeling. Stay posted for when I'm cast in an advanced study workshop and, later, for when I'm on Broadway and subsequently accepting my Tony. ;D

Thursday - Another trip to New York. (Are we seeing a trend here? Yes, the Liberty Bell is neat but no, it's decidedly *not* always sunny in Philadelphia). Before it closed, I wanted to see COLD WATER, an art show curated by the absolutely fabulous (and fellow Radical Faerie) Justin Bond. It was a show of visual art created by artists who typically channel their creativity into other media, ranging from performance art and song to acting to post-modern gender theory and more. *swoon*

Another highlight of the evening was a heading to Therapy (where, bless their hearts, pints of Stella Artois were only $3 - cheaper than Philly) and staying to see Levinia Draper perform along with Dorothy Bishop who was doing her best Sarah Palin, and damn it was good! Somewhere in the mix, my friend Nicholas and I decided that between the two of us, one was bound to win the $100 for the best audience go-go dancer and up we went. Long story short: I was ahead in the first round as Sarah Palin's pick because being from Alaska she “likes her men hairy and hung like a moose.” (Thank you Calvin Klein for bikini briefs that gather and lift!) However Nicholas pulled ahead and won in the dance portion. Feh! Regardless, it was an absolute hoot following Levinia's dance routine as she went along, singing “The Sun Will Come out Tomorrow” with her, and hearing Sarah Palin sing about converting gays to the tune of Wicked's “Popular.”

Friday – I volunteered for and attended Philly's premiere holiday party of the season, TOY by the Delaware Valley Legacy Fund. They collected a veritable mountain of toys for pediatric HIV/AIDS patients and presented aa big 'ol honkin' check to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Additionally, co-director Chris Bartlett (see how often we Faeries pop up where fabulosity is concerned?) delivered a beautiful speech, outlining goals for our community in Philadelphia for the next ten, twenty and thirty years. Bravo to our Lady Bartlett, we love you dearly!

Sunday – One more trip to the Big Apple. I don't even know how to describe how great it was. I saw a fellow classmate perform in an advanced workshop at the Ward Studio and was immensely proud of him. This was bookended by breakfast at Yaffa Cafe in the East Village with the delightful Kate Bornstein and dinner in a Midtown diner with one of my favorite new people of 2009, David Badash. “Auntie Kate” to teens, freaks, and other outlaws (that's me!), Kate asked great questions about spirituality, what challenged me most in life, and lots of other stuff that got my brain moving early on a Sunday. We discussed her latest blog about gay marriage and what it meant to move forward with a civil rights movement that built coalitions and addressed issues by urgency rather than popularity. More thoughts on that later in the week.

I met David later in the day with that same energy and had probably one of the best conversations I've ever had with someone I had only just recently met. This reaffirms that I will never again ask someone what they do as a first question, but rather, what they're strangest childhood dream or nightmare was or maybe what secret good deed they did that nobody ever found out about. Life is too short to not be asked and be asking the interesting questions. I'm here to keep it real, learn, grow, heal and make some fucking amazing art. And, of course, to be fabulous. In any event, David, who writes The New Civil Rights Movement, also really inspired me (OK, he told be what I should be doing, then apologized, but seriously I'm thankful because *somebody* needed to tell me what the hell I should be doing!) with regards to writing consistently. Hence, I outlined a week's worth of blogs on the bus ride home and am writing this now.

Know something fabulous, daring, brilliant or heart warming that I should be covering? Hit me up here in the blog comments section or on Twitter. Until next time, always be kind, never be cruel, and stay fabulous. xoxo

For Twitter's TransTuesday, A Blog

I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't have some awareness of transsexuality. My cousin Erica is a male to female (MTF) transsexual person. (Aside: Some people just say "a transsexual," including some trans people that I know, but in the same way I wouldn't say "a black" or "a gay" I will generally use transsexual as an adjective that modifies an aspect of a person's humanity rather than as a noun.) She is a somewhat distant cousin from me and her immediate family wasn't initially so accepting so I never met her until another cousin's 90th birthday just a few years ago. I don't know exactly how to describe the ways I heard about her talked about other than to say that she was the butt of some jokes except that everyone is the butt of some jokes and embarrassed stories in my family so it didn't seem malicious even if it wasn't optimal. Additionally, I was so fascinated by the idea of someone that would change their sex that I didn't really care what anyone else thought. I just wanted to meet her for as long as I can remember.

The other way in which I became aware of transsexuality was through programs on the topic on Discovery Health that I watched in high school. They were typically told as biopics on individuals, more often MTF than FTM, that were altering their sex through some combination of hormones, SRS , nd lessons on how to appropriately modify their voices and body movements. To me, this was a pretty straight forward thing. My understanding was that they were people who felt that they were born with the wrong bodies and they took action to rectify their spirit with their body. It wasn't my experience but it wasn't hard to understand. One program even discussed a study on the post-mortem study of the brains of 6 transsexual women demonstrating that a substructure of their hypothalamus called the BSTc was the same size of that typically seen in people born female. There was debate over whether this was a born variation that explained these women's transsexuality or whether it was a result of hormone therapy, but it seemed possible that there was a simple biological explanation for their transssexuality. It didn't seem like the kind of thing that should invite vitriol and even hate crimes to me. I never understood that.

That was a great primer for me, but there was a lot not being answered. Were the little boys who wanted to play with dolls longing for that because it was inherently a girl thing to do, or because that's what girls were doing and they knew they wanted to be girls? Where was nature in nurture in gendered behavior. Beyond that, there was a whole lot more learning to get me from that limited-but-valuable understanding of being transsexual and transgender to the gender queer, gender fucked, gender what/what gender? place that I live today. But that is all for another blog on another #transtuesday.

Not in my City of Brotherly Love

Buju Banton, virulent and violent homophobic rapper, is scheduled to play the Trocadero tomorrow night. His charming lyrics call for such violence as the flaying, burning and murder of gay men. is this the same Trocadero where I have seen homo-punk band Pansy Division and sung along to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, both as part of Q-Fest?!

Call to complain at 215-922-5483.

My Queer Identity

As a queer person, when I'm asked to self identify or someone chooses to apply a certain label to me, I consistently feel like I'm not being given the right options, or not enough, or the suffer for an ability to mix 'n match. Nor is it generally considered legitimate that on Tuesday I'm definitely a gay man, but by Thursday I'm genderqueer and a little bi-curious. Or a lot, for that matter. Sometimes I get hit on by a really hot dyke at Sisters and the fact that we'd smash everyone's preconceived notions about our respective identities adds to an attraction that is already real, present, palpable. (At this point I should confess: sorry straight girls and boys, but you rarely turn my gears. The truth is, I'm not attracted to gender half as much as I am to queerness in its own right.)

This is the primary reason that I identify as “queer” and not really anything else. As far as labels go, it's the non-label. It's identity by negation insofar as it's a bit like identifying as “not straight.” A friend and I were discussing her disinclination towards self-identifying as such because “queer” originally denoted being an outsider, odd, peculiar, the “other.” My response to this is two part: Firstly, I feel that we have largely reclaimed “queer” from being a pejorative word which is something I like to do anyway. Secondly, I am personally comfortable taking on an identity that continues to connote a certain outsider quality. I can socialize with anybody but when it comes to feeling at home, mainstream gay folks don't feel any more like family to be mainstream straight folks do. Or as I recently put it to a friend quite bluntly, “It's not just that I'm a faggot; I'm really fucking strange too.”

However, my identity as a queer man in the world is actually less about me than it is a desire to be inclusive of all who identify outside of heterosexual attraction and/or the binary gender system, or are transsexual. This summer at Philadelphia Pride a comedian who I generally enjoy paraded out the tired old “Where are bisexuals? OK put your hands down your all greedy.” schtick. It's not funny, it's not original, and it definitely has no place on a day that is supposed to celebrate the joy, the freedom and the pride in determining our sexuality and gender for ourselves. I'm always afraid that I'll miss someone in the growing alphabet soup that is currently hovering between LGBT and LGBTQIAA, depending on who you ask.

This leads me to my final conundrum of queer identity: what about people who I would consider queer but would not self-identify as such? The first example that would come to mind is a transsexual person who considers themselves heterosexual, successfully passes as the sex which they identify as, and choose to “go stealth” after their transition, ie, simply present as a person who was born as that sex. To me, the whole point of identity is that it is a deeply personal process and I will not ascribe any identity to a person which they object to. Because I see such a valuable opportunity for trans people to teach all of us about the false nature of binary sex and gender, I always find it sad when a person chooses not be out about it, and even sadder when they cannot, for whatever reason, be out. However, given the hate crime statistics regarding trans people and my place of speaking from many, many levels of privilige – white, male (from birth), college educated and raised in the upper middle class in a state that consistently has one of the highest per capita incomes in the country - it is hardly my pace to judge who can or should be out. At the end of the day, queer identity is something I continue to explore for myself and with others who likewise self identify.

Since it's always talk with you and not at you, I invite comments, questions and your own experience with identity politics, queer or otherwise.

"I found the cutest dress today" & other musings on gender.

I found the cutest dress today. I tried it on and fortunately nobody once called me a faggot or tried to hit me with sticks. In fact, nearby shoppers made helpful suggestions for footwear and accessories: "Those pumps might fit." "I recommend a beige shoe. "I just love your tiara." Granted, I was at Philly AIDS Thrift with hipsters, hippies, queers and just good old fashioned American liberals. I won't wear this costume from my house to the party I bought it for because I'm not entirely sure that I'd make it there in one piece. I mean, people have leaned out of car windows or stopped mid stride on the sidewalk to point out that I am, in fact, a faggot. However, unless I'm holding hands with or kissing a guy at the time, I'm a pretty average looking, gender conforming white male who generally rarely gets pulled out of his bubble of privilege, even for being queer. But what if I wore a dress in public? Would I get mocked? Jeered? Beaten to death outside the subway station? I'm not sure, and I don't aim to find out when I'm wearing four inch wedges and can't run away very quickly.

Wearing a dress for the first time was really liberating. Not, mind you, because I have longed to express a suppressed aspect of my gender of sexuality. It's just that my ass really enjoyed the breeze. I was also wearing it in a very safe place - the home of a queer friend where everybody, male, female or otherwise, was raiding her closet and trying on all of her (unbelievably fabulous) clothes. In fact, the outfit I bought today is for a party at her house as well. I can't say that I'd necessarily be comfortable wearing it anywhere else, even most queer spaces.

Now I ask you, what the fuck is that? I mean, yes, some of that is probably self-censorship and a lack of daring, but as much as I wouldn't be ostracized (too much or loudly) in a gay bar for that, I bet I wouldn't get picked up either. Let me tell you, though, I may look even hotter in a dress than whatever gender-role-conforming clothing I'd usually wear. For example, my chest hair is shown of beautifully in a strapless halter, and as nice as my legs look in cargo shorts, I think that a tulle skirt provides a lovely contrast to my super cut calf muscles. So the question is, if dresses are comfotable and look good on me, why don't I generally want to wear them? Well for one thing, a lot of the times we forget the whole blessing of being queer men and instead of challenging gender binary, partriarcy, misogyny and instead think of ourselves basically as the same as straight guys only we put our dicks elsewhere and are somewhat more likely, on average, to have a substantial knowledge of musical theater.

However much I reject gender binary in actions and am as happy to tell people that I bake cupcakes as I am to say I played rugby is college, dressing outside of gender normitive clothing takes examining my gender and my gender in relation to a society one layer deeper, to a place that's finally a little bit edgy for me. Possibly it's because I don't have any role models for men in dresses. I don't want to be a drag queen, it's not a sexual fetish as in transvestism, and I'm not doing it as part of a skit or pagent. I'd be one of the only guys out there saying, yep, I'm a dude, "I'm not trans, not a drag queen, don't get off on this (sidenote: all lovely and legit reasons for a man to wear a dress, just not my reason); I'm just a hot guy who wants to wear a dress today because after a number of decades I'm simply over pants at the moment."

However, I think the question is much bigger than me wearing a dress or not. The fact that doing so would, indeed, incite some level of discomfort, mocking and possible assault means that we are still, as a culture, so locked into a strict binary gender with assigned roles and costumes that our reaction to obvious deviations is tends to be swift and negative. So while I'm not so worried that I will be inconvenienced changing into my dress once I arrive at the party, I do worry for kids and people of all ages, queer and not queer, who are hiding pieces of their soul and failing to reach their full potential becuase some dream of theirs is gender nonconformist. I want to wear my dress right down Market Street at noon (OK, maybe 3 when the school buses are out) just so more girls will end up in engineering programs and boys will take up ballet. I want to. But it's fucking scary.

Second Generation Faggot

I've been kicking around this theory lately that being queer today is a little bit like being a child of immigrant parents.  The way that immigration often plays out in America is that the first generation gets here and does an unbelievable amount of grunt work. They scrimp, save, and work two jobs, often  while facing considerable racial, ethnic or religious bigotry while they're at it.  They are the first generation in America and they do all of this because they believe it will create greater opportunities and better lives for their children.  Often these children are supported by not only their nuclear family in achieving their dreams but an entire generation of immigrants who are looking after one another as a sort of extended family.

Gay men and women who came out in the 70s and 80s (ie those old enough, largely, to be my biological parents) are not unlike those first generation immigrants.  This summer will mark the 40th anniversary of the riots at Stonewall and the birth of the modern gay rights movement.  Many steps forward were met with violent pushes back.  Harvey Milk was murdered and justice was not carried out in the ensuing trial.  Silence = death and the Regan administration allowed the laissez-faire genocide of queer men.  In spite of these individual and collective tragedies (and often because of them) we are lucky today to have a community that are unbelievable advocates  for our safety, well being, happiness and success.

40 and 50 something gay men and women often take me under their wing in a way that is so unconditionally loving and supportive that to think of the enormity of it is almost overwhelming. I simply put it out to my Twitter community that I'd really like to learn about photography and there was a Radical Faerie asking me what weekend works for me.  I told a producer about my work with Project Twenty1 and he told me wants my help run a film project that he's starting.  Today I was scheduling a lesbian patient for surgery and when I told her I intended to study American Sign Language this summer at Philly Community she gave me the name and phone number of the exact person I should get in touch with.  She gave me her business card, invited me to the Equality Forum and made a point of teaching me a few signs as well before she left.  I have an entire extended family rooting for my success because they have worked so hard to gain dignity and rights in their lifetime and they want it to be even better for me.  This is just one reason that every day I am thankful not just for having friends and a job  and a dog but also for being born queer and thus into this unbelievable community of surrogate moms and dads, aunts, uncles and advocates.