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TURNS OUT, BARBIELAND ISN'T AS GAY AS S QUEER FANS HAD HOPED
I also found myself turng to even earlier “fai of choice”: my high school iend, the novelist Jane Haton, an ally of queer people, allowed me to clu a sectn om her novel of gay male adolcence, The Short History of a Prce; my high school/llege girliend, Lorae Edwalds, gave me permissn to publish scen om her mil and dramatic piece about the Michigan Womyn’s mic ftival, as viewed through a set of lbians who had, like Lorae and her wife, attend for several s; my iendship, which go back as far as middle school, wh the queer NY sculptor Peter Lane gave me the lovely image that grac the book ver. Some intify as queer (or e a parallel term, such as gay or LGBTQ+) and are lookg for opportuni to study a systematic way how their own experienc are nnected to broar histori and issu of “queerns” general. It was que mon, durg much of the twentieth century, to divi human sexual inty and experience to a neat bary: heterosexual-homosexual the se of genr; there have been and ntue to be bari cltered around such opposnal terms as “male-female” or “mascule-feme, ” pairs that trans people and their alli ntt and terrogate.
In his say “Ferment LGBT Studi and Queer Theory: Personal Rumatns on Contted Terra, ” Slagle wr about his own reer the field of munitn studi, which he began when the disciple’s scholarly and profsnal associatn, the Natnal Communitn Associatn (later the Speech Communitn Associatn), had tablished, a few years back, a uc (siar to an tert group, origally signed to raise awarens and do profsnal activism the associatn) for “Gay and Lbian Concerns”: the word “queer” had not yet really or fully entered the lexin as anythg but a slur. In the say, Slagle not the opposn he faced, sometim the form of ad homem (personal) attacks, for his attractn to queer theory (and for his e of the word queer and of self, which to the prev generatn was both unwele and, to their mds, unscholarly), and the say charts both the personal sts, psychologil and profsnal, that his mment to queer enacted on him, and more recent velopments: as of this wrg, the associatn now has a Cc on Gay, Lbian, Bisexual, Transgenr, and Queer Concerns, as well as a Gay, Lbian, Bisexual, Transgenr, and Queer Communitn Studi Group, which foc on scholarship on those inty groups. The thor Jane Haton, for example, whose gay-centered (perhaps even queer) novel, The Short History of a Prce, is clud, intifi as heterosexual, though she has had ep iendships and important relatnships wh queer folk.
In rrpondg wh the ntemporary New York–based sculptor Peter Lane, who intifi as a gay man (perhaps he would e the word queer), I posed the qutn whether his art is queer (you n fd exampl of his magnificent — “monumental, ” to e his own scriptive term — piec onle). Straight guys bee gay prison...