Gay Culture

Older, the proverbial artistic rebirth of a household name, previously associated with lightweight Pop. A personal statement – his first release after a prolonged judicial battle with recording companies over the image attached to the George Michael brand, the man trapped under ice.

This article explores Warhol and Nico's relationship with Europe through their formative years and subsequent collaboration in Warhol's underground and experimental filmmaking. In the 1950s Warhol was a commercial artist in New York, circulating in a gay milieu, and his work often conveyed Europe and a European sensibility in its illustration of 'all things Europe', but especially fashion. Nico was a fashion model and frequently seen in European fashion magazines before landing a few film roles, including a small part in La dolce vita (Fellini, 1960) and a featuring role in the French erotic film StripTease (Poitrenaud, 1962). Nico moved to New York and found her way to Warhol's art studio and social scene known as The Factory. At The Factory Nico joined the art-rock group The Velvet Underground at Warhol's insistence and featured in several films Warhol made between 1966 and 1967, including Chelsea Girls (Warhol, 1966) and a number of portrait films called Screen Tests (Warhol, 1964–1966). This article explores the presence and negotiation of Europe in both Nico's and Warhol's life and work in the 1950s and 1960s. The article pays particular attention to their early careers and the shifts in Nico's persona demonstrated by the difference between the French StripTease and Warhol's experimental Screen Tests.

La culture gay contemporaine met en avant des personnalités médiatiques souvent dénommées "icônes gay". Souvent des femmes, souvent hétérosexuelles, que représentent ces images du désir gay ? Comment se fait-il qu'un public homosexuel masculin érigent au rang d'icônes ces figures si particulières du genre et de la sexualité ? Pour répondre à ces questions, il a paru opportun de confronter les théories psychanalytiques de Freud et Lacan aux écrits de Cultural Studies sur la culture gay. À partir de là, il est apparu que la construction de l'iconicité gay dans la culture capitaliste contemporaine s'inscrivait :
- d'une part, dans une réappropriation queer de la culture populaire hétérosexuelle, et en particulier un goût pour les figures maternelles subversives face à la fonction phallique ;
- d'autre part, dans une esthétique parodique de la souffrance dite "camp", incarnée par une féminité excessive.
En se penchant sur des cas spécifiques d'icônes gay (Madonna, Lady Gaga, Judy Garland, Britney Spears, entre autres) ainsi que des œuvres littéraires et cinématographiques ("Œdipe roi", "Médée", "8 femmes", entre autres), cette étude interroge également la dimension politique de la culture gay : en quoi l'iconicité gay participe-t-elle au néolibéralisme ainsi qu'à l'homonationalisme du XXIe siècle ?

中文提要:
「同性戀」是西方二十世紀所彙整發明而使用的一個現代概念，這個概念在中文文化的世界裡，也已經移植生根，成為當前中文地區如臺灣、香港...等地標定情慾人群的常用字彙。這個歷史是立足於現代臺灣「同志運動」的發展現況，企圖往前追溯相關「同性情慾」的概念，並且探討社會對於情慾人群其身份認知的
建構歷程。在現代情慾同志(tongzhi)或酷兒(queer)理念尚未普及之前，實踐同性情慾的人群都受到了污名形象的連結。
本論文將時間場域置於七０年代到八０年代末的兩個十年週期裡，本文根據文獻蒐集或是口述訪問，試圖發現社會中同性情慾事件浮出的時機，以及探討社會對於該情慾現象的認知內容。
本論文於介紹中西方對於同性情慾歷史的研究概況後，隨即將七０年代可遇見與發展情慾聯誼的空間，作一介紹。並且說明七０年代文學中，所展現當時的情慾概念。七０年代亦有一些關於同性情慾的刑事案件，這些案件促使各界逐漸重視「同性戀」現象。其中於八０年代前後，臺灣的醫學界也開始進行本土個案的研究。
該研究後來被推導出「同性戀」病理概念的通則，這些論述總將性取向的成因歸咎到家庭教育與親職角色。無論是其後的《孽子》小說，或是持續出現的案件，都使類似青少年「成長學習」的歸因被強調而出。但自 1985 年臺灣出現本土首位因同性關係
而感染的愛滋感染者後，社會突然亟欲瞭解「同性戀」的文化與其心聲。數個雜誌紛紛製作專題，義工與自白者的出現，使得社會認知「同性戀」的角度，從無可癒的壞孩子轉而變成弱勢族群的一份子。
Abstract 英文提要:
The thesis deals with the social recognition of homosexua
lity during the past two decades. As some scholars known, "homosexuals" were invented in the early twenty century. Now, the noun is well known to Chinese areas also.
Somehow, in Taiwan, "homosexuals" was not a particular role in the early 70's. In the early 80's, the psychiatry report of local patients became the typical image by the doctors' and media's promotion. In the mid-80's, the criminals and the youth roles in the famous gay novel made gays as bad guys. While AIDS crisis attacked Taiwan, gays were thought as a "dangerous group". Again and again, the society always faced the dark side of gay even ts. Put it another way, only the obvious events happened, and the society discovered homosexuality. Anyway, the events always carried negative gay roles. Under this condition, the doctors, the social work scholar, the media and the police
all attributed "homosexuals" to the family and parents factors. In Taiwanes
medical term, though gays were asked to be tolerated, but the
sympaty was out of "incurable" growing process, not for eterosexuality introspection.
As the first AIDS virus carrier appeared, The medical fields and media were eager to know the gay groups and gay culture suddenly. When the gay volunteers'
statement and the gay topics of magazines showed up frequently. The real voices of gays began to express the needs and the miserable life. And the minority view was forming then.

This study outlinines the representation of queer intimacy in main stream media in the Philippines. Representations of queerness in local and international media can be a reflection of the culture where the media product belongs to and these representations can be peculiar and intolerable to different communities. Examining media representations of the queer community in a predominantly Catholic country means breaking the religious belief, principles, and stereotypes about homosexuality and same-sex relationship. Using a mainstream media and gender theory this study examined how OPM (Original Pinoy Music) presents ideas about queer intimacy. Over the past years Original Pinoy Music (Original Filipino Music) or OPM has produced chart-topping and controversial hit songs which includes: This guy is in love with you pare (pare refers to a guy or men) released in 2002: Nagmahal ako ng bakla (I fell in love with a gay) released in 2009: and lastly Pare mahal mo raw ako (Man, you love me?) released in 2014. By examining these songs, this study outlines tropes on how OPM songs present queer intimacy in the Philippine culture. This study also identifies how media created a new way of presenting gay and homosexual relationship-from the stereotypes of gays having illnesses and mental health problems, mainstream media continues to present that queer relationship is not all about love and sexual desire but also it promotes acceptance and love towards people in the community. A queer relationship does not only revolve in the idea of having a same-sex relationship but the idea that queer relationship is also between friends and other people of the community by manifesting acceptance and love. Amidst the conservative culture of the Philippines, mainstream media continues to progress and develop ways on how to present gender and sexuality in different media products. These representations create ways of showing acceptance and understanding towards identities particularly homosexuality and queer relationships.

Observers of the Middle East in Europe and the United States over the past several centuries have been fascinated by the question of Middle Eastern sexuality. This has often led to exaggerated or distorted claims of nonstandard sexual practice-particularly same-sex activity that have frequently been assailed by Middle Eastern critics as exemplary
of "Orientalism." At the same time, many other observers
characterize Islam as vehemently opposed to same-sex sexual activity, making it seem that such activity would be impossible in today's world. The truth lies somewhere in between. Same-sex sexual activity definitely exists in the Middle East, but it is not always constructed or practiced in the same way as in Europe or the United States.

As an out gay man who used Grindr as a tool to meet other homosexual men, I often believed that such applications and their innate focus on sex were significantly changing the ways in which gay culture behaved. Had it changed the way gay men presented themselves? Is it implicit in the refocused efforts on HIV/AIDS awareness?

Through an investigation into digital spaces such as Grindr I am able to draw similarities between the postmodern societies we currently live and that of the birth of gay culture throughout the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. This study looks at elements of gay culture including semiotics, social construction, sexual desire and gender identity and how these have been remediated within digital gay culture in the form of Grindr, which results in a convergence of queer and heteronormative concepts. Concepts, which originated from prolific queer theorists such as Judith Butler and Michel Foucault.

This study argues that media representations of queer intimacies can be transgressive. Representations of queerness in local and international media can be a reflection of the culture where the media product belongs to and these representations can be peculiar and intolerable to different communities. Since these representations of queerness in any media product are rare and unacceptable it can be seen as transgressive in a way that it goes beyond the norms of a particular community and violates the common perceptions about gender and sexuality. Examining media representations of the queer community in a predominantly Catholic country means breaking the religious belief, principles, and stereotypes about homosexuality and same-sex relationship. Using a mainstream media and gender theory this study examined whether and how one particular Filipino mainstream media representation of queer intimacies can enact such transgression. Over the past years Original Pinoy Music (Original Filipino Music) or OPM has produced chart-topping and controversial hit songs which includes: This guy is in love with you pare (pare refers to a guy or men) released in 2002: Nagmahal ako ng bakla (I fell in love with a gay) released in 2009: and lastly Pare mahal mo raw ako (Man, you love me?) released in 2014. By examining these songs, this study outlines tropes on how OPM songs present transgression in queer intimacy including the image of love for money only to gaiety and satisfaction which presents how an openly gay man makes a cisgender man falls in love for him by satisfying him through his humorous antics, this is one way of showing transgression in queer relationship in Philippine context by going beyond the common stereotype of a cisgender man falling in love to a gay man for his wealth to falling in love genuinely because of gaiety and satisfaction in the relationship. This study also identifies how media created a new way of presenting gay and homosexual relationship-from the stereotypes of gays having illnesses and mental health problems, mainstream media continues to present that queer relationship is not all about love and sexual desire but also it promotes acceptance and love towards people in the community. A queer relationship does not only revolve in the idea of having a same-sex relationship but the idea that queer relationship is also between friends and other people of the community by manifesting acceptance and love. Amidst the conservative culture of the Philippines, mainstream media continues to progress and develop ways on how to present gender and sexuality in different media products. These representations create a transgressive way of showing acceptance and understanding towards identities particularly homosexuality and queer relationships.

Grounded on an ethnography of the European gay party circuit, this article analyzes gay men’s identity shift, and the maximization
of their (sexual) contacts, in relation to substance use and trade. Breaking away from the psychological and medical
normalization at stake in the years of the Aids epidemic, these homosexual transactions may rely on an economy of self and
collective excess to be thought out in terms of sumptuary affirmation of social and sexual identity.

This article draws on qualitative interviews with 40 gay male undergraduates at four universities across England to explore the dynamics of participants' friendship networks in the context of decreased homophobia. Describing their schools and universities as gay-friendly spaces, most participants developed close friendships with both straight and sexual minority peers in spontaneous ways, away from institutional venues such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender student societies. Building on Bourdieu's conceptualization of the symbolic economy of class, I introduce a new concept to understand how having a visible gay identity can act as a form of privilege in inclusive, post-gay social fields: gay capital. Through shared knowledge of gay cultures, belonging to gay social networks, and having one's gay identity recognized as a form of prestige, gay capital supplements cultural, social, and symbolic forms of capital. These findings trouble traditional generalizations of gay youth as victimized due to their sexual minority status. However, finding that participants' experiences differed across the four research settings , this article also develops an intersectional analysis by highlighting that access to gay capital is limited by other forms of class, gender, and sexual hierarchy.

RESUMO: Este artigo discute a livre performatividade de gênero, pela análise de imagens, no âmbito da Cultura Visual, contextualizada à cultura gay, tão latente na capital alemã, na época República de Weimar, entre a primeira e a segunda guerra mundial. Por intermédio de algumas imagens das famosas casas noturnas que contemplavam todos os gostos e orientações, mediando com relatos de sobreviventes e contexto político cultural da sociedade alemã àquela época. Orientado por análises fotográficas além de pesquisas bibliográficas acerca da Cultura Visual e construções de gênero, o texto apresenta resultados da pesquisa histórica e imagética acerca da liberdade de vida, das vanguardas criativas e crise econômica que desencadearam a tomada de poder pelos nazistas. Palavras-Chave: Performatividade de gênero, Homossexualidade, Cultura Visual, Berlim. ABSTRACT: This paper discusses the free performativity of gender through the analysis of images in the context of Visual Culture, contextualized to the gay culture, so potential in the German capital, at the time Weimar Republic, between the first and second world war. Through the images of the famous nightclubs that contemplated all tastes and orientations, mediating with survival reports and cultural context of German society at that time. Guided by photographic analyses as well as bibliographical research on Visual Culture and gender constructions, the text presents the results of historical and imagetic research on freedom of life, creative avant-garde and economic crisis. that triggered the Nazi seizure of power.

This paper examines the processes through which a commercial bar is transformed into a hospitable space. Drawing on a study of a venue patronized by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual/transgender consumers, it considers how social and commercial forms of hospitality are mobilized. The paper argues that hospitable space has an ideological, normative and situational dimension. More specifically, it suggests the bar’s operation is tied to a set of ideological conceptions, which become the potential basis of association and disassociation among consumers. It examines the forces and processes that shape who participates in the production and consumption of hospitality and how. Finally, it considers the situational, emergent nature of hospitality and the discontinuous production of hospitable space. Rather than focusing exclusively on host-guest or provider-customer relations, which dominates existing work on hospitality, the paper examines how consumers’ perceptions, actions and interactions shape the production of hospitality. By doing so the paper offers an alternative approach to understanding queer spaces, bar operation as well as hospitality.

Originalmente acuñado en el siglo XIX como un título honorífico para las principales sopranos de ópera, el término diva, que proviene del latín “diosa”, ha ampliado constantemente su uso y significado en la “cultura gay” para referirse a una amplia gama de intérpretes femeninas de diversos géneros musicales y estratos de la cultura, cuya personalidad espectacular y su extravagancia performativa, inspiran la devoción de la población queer (Farmer, 2005). Para Craig Jennex (2013) este fanatismo responde a la búsqueda de un escape de la realidad heteronormativa, de un potencial político, de un sentido de comunidad y de una resistencia queer utópica. Sin embargo, las más famosas divas de la cultura pop, convertidas en “iconos gay”, fueron y son mujeres heterosexuales cisgénero, es decir, que no forman parte en sí de la disidencia sexo-genérica. Y es aquí donde surge el problema de la representación de la identidad y del cuerpo, ya que las personas trans han tenido una menor representación en la industria del entretenimiento (proveniente de Europa y Norteamérica) e incluso tienen menor protagonismo dentro de la comunidad LGBTIQ+.

Entonces surge una importante pregunta ¿dónde están las divas disidentes? durante las dos primeras décadas del siglo XXI han sucedido cambios en la escena de la música pop y electropop, donde artistas que se autoperciben trans y no binarixs han ganado mayor representación y respeto de parte de la crítica, tales como: Sophie, Christine and The Queens, Dorian Elektra o Kim Petras. En este contexto se encuentra Alejandra Ghersi, conocida en la escena musical como Arca, una artista transgénero venezolana, basada en Barcelona, quien se desempeña como cantante, DJ, performer, productora y compositora; cuyo gesto performativo, desde la feminidad trans, nos permitirá cuestionar la construcción del cuerpo, el género y la femineidad en el siglo XXI.

For a long time, men have commercialized the female body through the media, especially in porn. A Netflix show, Hot Girls Wanted, has recently brought many of these stories to light. But what about those men who become objects of pleasure for other men? Who is the person behind the body? How do you live your life when you become an object of desire? Over the past months, I asked this kind of questions to well-known gay porn stars based in Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, the UK, the USA and Canada. They had many things to say about the ups and downs of a profession greatly transformed by the internet in recent years.
---
I have compiled the stories of these "objectified" men to narrate how they influence the gay mainstream, but can grow distanced from it too. Gradually, they are also leading the way to a digitally pornified world where men, gay and straight, are influenced by the rise of the Instagram Stud.

This text examines Mother Boats C.P. photographs of the very first gay parade down Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles in June 1970, in celebration of the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City. These mainly unpublished photographs are important because they bear witness to the people, the places and the event as it was taking place: the first flowering of mass gay visibility and sensibility the world had ever seen.

This article addresses the various ideological constructions of the US-Mexican border from the perspective of Latino Men Who Have Sex with Men. These men constructed the border through the assignation of various qualities supposedly inherent in bodies and landscapes. In engaging in these assignations, this article will argue that in fact these men embody ideologies that create the border as not just a mark in the geopolitical landscape but also as a lived and practiced reality. The border is therefore a bodily experience of regimes of power-knowledge-pleasure (Foucault) which allows borderlanders to manipulate these regimes for various reasons including: avoiding social injury; use of specific zones of the body; and engaging in identity transvestism. Overall, this article engages queer theory; borderland theory; and demonstrates the complexity of the border as a lived and embodied phenomenon.

Hallo Sascha, Habibi (Beck)

hier der Endstand von meinem subjektiven, ergänzten Auszug aus einer Academia-Dissertation von Sebastian Haunss (2004) uu kollektiver Identität bei der Aitonomen- und bei der Schwulenbewegung Thema HIV/AUDS, Einschüchterung/Repressiion und sexuelle Freiheit, dann Bewegungsvergleich und wichtigkeit von sozialen Orten, an denen Grundüberzeugungen und im Dienst der Gesamtgesellschaft dieser nahegebracht werden  gelebt (48 aus 291 Seiten):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B-lfgVV6Zt7P6eiLN0ERPRGhQc57OXFI/view?usp=drivesdk

(19.1.21 13:07: wesentliche Ergänzung zu den Autonomen: die Rolle von geheimdienstlichen Agents provocateurs, die zu Gewalt aufhetzen, die der Politik Einschränken von Bürgerrechten und Ausbau von Polizei- und Geheimdienstapparat ermöglicht)

LOVE
Your
Ravi

This study used a qualitative research design to examine the meanings and circumstances underpinning practices of ‘barebacking’ - unprotected anal intercourse in episodic sexual encounters among younger (mainly in their 20s) same-sex attracted men - in Melbourne, Australia. Using a modified grounded theory approach, a series of in-depth interviews with 24 men were conducted. The results reveal that understanding practices of barebacking requires an appreciation of how sex takes on multiple meanings in practice. Meanings in sex for the men in this study tend to be organized around masculinity. In sexual negotiations, meanings, initiation, emotions, dynamics (e.g. ‘shared’ communication, ‘directing’) and wider contextual influences (e.g. public health discourses) all play a role in sexual choreography and risk taking. Implications for health promotion and policy are discussed.

This article explores Warhol and Nico’s relationship with Europe through their formative years and subsequent collaboration in Warhol’s underground and experimental filmmaking. In the 1950s Warhol was a commercial artist in New York, circulating in a gay milieu, and his work often conveyed Europe and a European sensibility in its illustration of ‘all things Europe’, but especially fashion. Nico was a fashion model and frequently seen in European fashion magazines before landing a few film roles, including a small part in La dolce vita (Fellini, 1960) and a featuring role in the French erotic film Strip-Tease (Poitrenaud, 1962). Nico moved to New York and found her way to Warhol’s art studio and social scene known as The Factory. At The Factory Nico joined the art-rock group The Velvet Underground at Warhol’s insistence and featured in several films Warhol made between 1966 and 1967, including Chelsea Girls (Warhol, 1966) and a number of portrait films called Screen Tests (Warhol, 19...

The introduction of effective combination antiretroviral therapy for HIV disease in 1996 was commonly narrated as a major event that transformed HIV from an inevitable death sentence into a ‘chronic manageable illness’ – at least for those populations in wealthier countries granted socially and economically affordable access to the new treatments, not to mention the relevant clinical infrastructures to monitor their effectiveness such as regular viral load testing. Sociologists cast this moment as the beginning of the normalization of responses to HIV/AIDS, in which activist engagements with HIV science on the part of affected communities resolved into the figure of the patient, or the passive consumer of medical goods (Rosenbrock et al. 2000). While the reframing of HIV as a chronic manageable illness can certainly be understood in terms of normalization, in this post I argue this narrative overlooks the sense in which the ‘Protease Moment’ (Rofes 2015) was predicated upon and instigated various forms of labour on the part of people living with HIV/AIDS that entailed experimentation with drugs and their diverse affordances.

This essay analyzes the naming strategies of LGBT gamers and their allies in massively multiplayer online games. The name choices for their characters and for the groups to which their characters belong are informed by the game developers’ policies on acceptable and unacceptable language, the symbols and phrases commonly associated with gay culture, and the hostility toward homosexuality frequently experienced online by LGBT gamers. These factors often result in creative naming strategies to negotiate the conflicting desire for both openness and protective concealment within the public spaces of online gaming.

The question of homoerotic sensibility is, in the purpose of this thesis, a matter of visual language connected to the portrayal of male bodies. By identifying this sensibility throughout the western art canon the essay seeks to understand its origins, development and function in relation to expressions of power. With the introduction of theorists such as Alois Riegl, Laura Mulvey, Abigail Solomon-Godeau and Raewyn Connell, the aim is to deconstruct homosexual masculinity. Adapting formal analysis and parts of visual semiotics, the focus lies on the visual expression of power through the homoerotic gaze, and asks what consequences it has in forming homosexual identity. Greek antiquity is home not only to the ideals that foster western art history, but is also where we find early examples of same-sex affection being portrayed in the arts. Hence classical antiquity is so important for the homoerotic: whenever the classical language of style is popular throughout history, we are sure t...

On Saturday, 8th September 1979, one of Melbourne’s favorite and longest-running gay haunts, the Woolshed bar at the Hotel Australia, closed its doors for the last time. As closing time approached, the management called police because some of the patrons had been ‘souveniring’ items of décor from the bar. When the police arrived, no one was arrested for ‘souveniring’, but two men, Terry Stokes and Darren Turner, were arrested for indecent behavior. This consisted of two goodnight kisses, at a time just over a year before homosexual acts would be legalized in Victoria. Although a relatively minor act, and in accordance with police attitudes at the time, this created a storm both within Melbourne’s gay community and beyond, as the incident was amplified by its connections to different understandings of space and place . I will look at the gay patron’s sense of connection with the bar (and the contrary attitudes of the management), and the ways in which both gay rights activists and police connected the symbolism of this case to wider attitudes towards the gay club scene in the late seventies.