A pneer of LGBTQ studi dar to suggt that gayns is a way of beg that gay men mt learn om one another to bee who they are. The geni of gay culture ris some of s most spised stereotyp -- atheticism, snobbery, melodrama, glamour, ritur of women, and obssn wh mothers -- and the social meang of style.
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HOW TO BE GAY
In “How to Be Gay,” David M. Halper argu that when to fg what means to be a homosexual man, sex is overrated. * how to be gay david halperin *
Halper, a profsor of the history and theory of sexualy at the Universy of Michigan, Ann Arbor, provotively argu that when to fg what means to be a homosexual man, sex is overrated. ” The great value of tradnal gay male culture, he further poss, perhaps even more challenggly, “ris some of s most spised and repudiated featur: gay male femy, diva worship, atheticism, snobbery, drama, adoratn of glamour, riture of women and obssn wh the figure of the mother.
” The claratns n unter to much of the prevailg gay pri ethos, which argu that gay men are, to borrow the tle of Andrew Sullivan’s 1995 book, “virtually normal. Halper, like the figure on the Heisman Trophy, rais his hand rebuff: “For all s unniable benefs, gay pri is now preventg om knowg ourselv. Devilishly, he pos: “Sometim I thk homosexualy is wasted on gay people.
HOW TO BE GAY BY DAVID M HALPER – REVIEW
” And, speakg about how gay men make their own of popular culture: “What do perverts do, after all, if not pervert? ” “How to Be Gay” is based on a class wh the same tle that Mr. Many outsirs nmned the class as “an overt attempt to rec straight stunts to the gay liftyle, ” Mr.
They feared offered what he lls “the blueprt for homosexual world domatn. ) Instead, the class was about how men who are already gay velop “a nsc inty, a mon culture, a particular outlook on the world, a shared sense of self. But his class examed why Madonna, midcentury morn furnure and Mi Coopers, to name merely three thgs, me to matter so much to so many gay men.
In packg the ias up to “How to Be Gay, ” the book versn, Mr. Halper n also be ank and funny, and he gets a lot of tertg utteranc off his plate “How to Be Gay.
HOW TO BE GAY
” The book n be a drag ( the non-gay sense) but is never a bore. Among the most unual thgs about “How to Be Gay” is that is, at heart, a 500-pl-page work that explor a fundamental kd of gay sensibily by ncentratg almost exclively on one actrs, Joan Crawford, and on a sgle scene a sgle movie, the 1945 drama “Mildred Pierce. Halper teas an enormo amount out of this scene, cludg the sense of “glamour and abjectn” gay dienc fd Crawford, and how the film packag the “transgrsive spectacle of female strength, tonomy, feists and power.
Halper works up to an argument (impossible to summarize here) about how the film evok a “dissint perspective” on the very ia of romantic is articulate about many other thgs this book, cludg how gay men often fd more ronance straight cultural artifacts than gay on. ’ ” He nsirs what he lls the “fias” of Lady Gaga’s anthemic pro-gay sgle “Born This Way.
” Wh this song, he suggts, she “has simply mistaken her gay appeal” by makg her msage too explic. “Nongay forms, ” he wr, “are often gayer than gay-themed on. When the subject is women, or gay men, tragedy scends to mere melodrama.