Sarah Schulman, who is right only half the time and who lies about gay men, is at it again. Rather following the pattern of her other activities, in which Israel is viewed as the gay problem in the Middle East while Muslims, Islam, sharia, Palestine, and Palestinians are not, Schulman commits the lie that How to Survive a Plague intentionally pinkwashed nonwhites and women from ACT UP’s history.
What did you think of How to Survive a Plague? There seemed to be a certain whitewashing of history going on.
Well, we call it “The Five White People Who Saved the World” – that’s our nickname for it. And those white people are very busy, because apparently they’re always saving everything all the time. Everywhere you go, you see them.
Jim Hubbard, the director of United in Anger: A History of ACT UP, and David France did a public debate. It was co-sponsored by Visual AIDS and you can watch it on YouTube and it’s really, really fascinating. At one point they open up for questions, and the first question to David is: “Why do you have no women or people of color in the film?” And he says, well, I wanted to focus on wealthy white men because they had the time to devote to activism.
Now, as a person who has interviewed 168 surviving members of ACT UP New York, I can tell you that’s not historically correct. People in ACT UP gave their entire lives to ACT UP. All different kinds of people from every class and background would report in our interviews that they were at ACT UP five nights a week, that their entire life was ACT UP. And that had nothing to do with how much money you had. And the second thing he said was that these men went to good universities and so they were able to understand the science. That is absurd. The audience almost started laughing. One of the best experts on the science of AIDS in ACT UP was Garance Franke-Ruta, who was 19. We all sat there and realized that this man knows nothing about ACT UP.
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The foregoing posting appeared on Joe Clark’s personal Weblog on 2014.06.06 06:41. This presentation was designed for printing and omits components that make sense only onscreen. (If you are seeing this on a screen, then the page stylesheet was not loaded or not loaded properly.) The permanent link is: https://blog.fawny.org/2014/06/06/schulman-men/
Gaybros, those gay men who want to be both and not just the former, are a complex, prickly, still-evolving group. They bewilder queers and LGBTs, who basically call them transphobic and racist. (Except Toronto Gaybros are overrun by Chinese and other “Asians,” by their own admission; point out that they admitted it and they call you a racist.)
I have previously described these guys as looking like engineering students, which many of them are. A helpful poll has revealed what various respondents study in school. Whaddya know: This is the first group of out gay men in human history to be reasonably represented in male-dominated disciplines. (Majors and minors included. Plans and aspirations generally excluded. Some licence taken with course descriptions to collapse them onto set categories [also sometimes impossible]. These are all young fellas and their plans and outcomes will of course vary.)
Male-dominated science and technology professions (71)
Engineering: 13 (the single largest, and largest single, field)
Computer science: 7
Physics: 6
Math: 10
Economics: 6
Biology: 7
Chemistry: 8
Technology (all other than above): 13
Humanities (55)
English: 3
Philosophy: 10
Not lavender languages (6) and linguistics (4)
Humanities (other): 34
Surprises
Nursing: 2
Graphic design: 4
Fashion design: 2
Music: 5
Professions (showing poorly)
Law: 1
Medicine: 2
Business (all): 11
Education (all): 5
Psychology (6) is deemed its own category
What is one incontrovertible conclusion of the research into gay money? If you’re a gay male and you want to earn a living commensurate with your education, duke it out with straight guys in male-dominated professions. I say again: This is the first known cohort of actual gay males demonstrably interested in doing just that.
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The foregoing posting appeared on Joe Clark’s personal Weblog on 2014.05.21 12:56. This presentation was designed for printing and omits components that make sense only onscreen. (If you are seeing this on a screen, then the page stylesheet was not loaded or not loaded properly.) The permanent link is: https://blog.fawny.org/2014/05/21/gaybrosmajors/
Diverging noticeably from the Brazilian Hunks of Instagram archetype is the alleged DJ Rafa Nunes, a Brazilian living in Paris, as seen in the chronicler of all men bony, paunchy, British, or otherwise homely and undistinguished, Meat (first ¶ second). [continue with: Fairest Brazilian →]
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The foregoing posting appeared on Joe Clark’s personal Weblog on 2014.05.09 13:29. This presentation was designed for printing and omits components that make sense only onscreen. (If you are seeing this on a screen, then the page stylesheet was not loaded or not loaded properly.) The permanent link is: https://blog.fawny.org/2014/05/09/rafanunes/
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The foregoing posting appeared on Joe Clark’s personal Weblog on 2014.05.09 12:54. This presentation was designed for printing and omits components that make sense only onscreen. (If you are seeing this on a screen, then the page stylesheet was not loaded or not loaded properly.) The permanent link is: https://blog.fawny.org/2014/05/09/brettmorse/
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The foregoing posting appeared on Joe Clark’s personal Weblog on 2014.05.09 12:43. This presentation was designed for printing and omits components that make sense only onscreen. (If you are seeing this on a screen, then the page stylesheet was not loaded or not loaded properly.) The permanent link is: https://blog.fawny.org/2014/05/09/averyhappythursday/
[W]hat’s holding them back is fear of being criticized. Why do you think Gawker is snarkier than I would like? The easy way to insulate yourself against snark is to preëmptively snark. Snark before anybody else does. That’s a kind of classic defensive humor. Make fun of yourself before somebody else does and lower everybody’s expectations.
Growing up in a community of survivors left her permanently thinking about how people find their way to vibrant lives. “In my community there were two groups of people,” she said. “There were the ones who did not die and the ones who came back to life.”
“Sometimes you go elsewhere not because you are not liking the one you are with; you are not liking the person you have become.”
