The Cambridge History of Gay and Lbian Lerature - November 2014
Contents:
- WAS OMAN'S LATE SULTAN THE 'ONLY GAY MONARCH' THE WORLD AND WHY DO PEOPLE CARE?
- LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENR AND INTERSEX WEBS
WAS OMAN'S LATE SULTAN THE 'ONLY GAY MONARCH' THE WORLD AND WHY DO PEOPLE CARE?
In tradnal Ottoman practice, the termology of “gay” and “straight” was largely absence om disurse, as explaed by scholar Serkan Görkemli.
There, zenn equently perform (whout a sexual element) for straight-intified male dienc says filmmaker Mehmet Bay, whose 2012 feature Zenne Dancer explor the iendship between an Istanbul zenne dancer, a German photographer, and a gay “bear” om the nservative Urfa provce. Back when Bay and his llaborator Caner Alper started rearchg zenne 2006, they saw as a “vanishg culture” – found only ral areas and a few unrground gay clubs Istanbul.
LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENR AND INTERSEX WEBS
Even among Istanbul's sizable gay muny, for whom zenne dancg might have particular ronance, “people would rather watch drag shows or go-go boys.
But the past half-, zenne dancg Istanbul has gone mastream: bolstered by the media attentn paid to Bay and Alper's film as well as the succs of gay crossover clubs like Chanta: which ter their zenne shows to a largely heterosexual, female clientele. When he was 15 or 16, a iend enuraged him to start dancg publicly, but the only work he uld fd was a seedy gay nightclub Istanbul's Aksaray district.