Book Review: Makg Gay Okay: How Ratnalizg Homosexual Behavr Chang Everythg - PMC

Contents:

• HOW TO BE GAY
• HOW TO BE GAY BY DAVID M HALPER – REVIEW
• 13 VERY GAY AND VERY GOOD BOOKS YOU SHOULD READ THIS PRI MONTH
• BOOK REVIEW: MAKG GAY OKAY: HOW RATNALIZG HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVR CHANG EVERYTHG
• BOOK REVIEWS: GAY BOOKS FOR THE SOUL
• A MEMOIR ABOUT QUEER INTY, TOLD ONE GAY BAR AT A TIME
• 5 BOOKS GAY MEN CAN READ TO IMPROVE THEIR LIV
• HOW TO BE GAY
• YOU CAN'T READ THAT! BANNED BOOK REVIEW: THIS BOOK IS GAY
• IS TROYE SIVAN’S ‘RH’ SEXY FUN OR GAY DETR?

HOW TO BE GAY

” 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. 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 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.

“How To Be Gay is…wrten by a gifted thker and wrer who has e to see that there is not jt a polil and sexual gay culture (s foundatnal event the rtg outsi the Stonewall Inn 1969), based on gay inty rather than sensibily, but also a nonsexual gay culture, based on mos of feelg and exprsive artifacts.

“[Halper] provotively argu that when to fg what means to be a homosexual man, sex is overrated… Culture matters more… [How To Be Gay] is never a bore… [It] explor a fundamental kd of gay sensibily… Halper teas an enormo amount out of [a] scene [ Mildred Pierce], cludg the sense of ‘glamour and abjectn’ gay dienc fd [Joan] Crawford, and how the film packag the ‘transgrsive spectacle of female strength, tonomy, feists and power.

HOW TO BE GAY BY DAVID M HALPER – REVIEW

As he pots out, sexualy is the area where gay men differ least om straight men… Gay taste is somethg more sgular, probably lked to cipient feelgs of dissiary om one’s peers… Halper is right to fend the old ruals and the lgo and body language that go wh them… So long live mp, and all the other cultural pursus that gay people have tradnally embraced. “[A] provotively tled cril cri r… To summarize Halper’s amb book is tricky, but thk of as an exploratn of the tensn between the official Pri Para, celebratg post-Stonewall gay inty, and the Drag March, celebratg pre-liberatn gay culture… Halper is at his bt when criqug the current assiatnist mol of gay-rights activism, wh s nial of any cultural terts or athetic pots-of-view that ht of femy or mps or of the ‘stereotypilly gay.

’ His cultural history of how this attu emerged the 1970s will be surprisg to those who view the gay-rights movement as a nsistently posive progrsn; Halper argu nvcgly that as butch mascule styl beme ever more mandatory, both for attractg sexual/romantic partners (no femm, no fats!

…Halper is plyg his own twist on the faiar ia that by aligng themselv wh certa forms—flamboyance, abject glamour, exaggerated femy—gay men implicly challenge the uptight s of a patriarchal culture… Gay culture, for Halper, isn’t really attached to any given person’s experience; rather, ’s a set of tactics, adopted behavrs, and strategi imbrited a much larger social field… Frivoly, irony, superficialy, thenticy, flamboyance, snobbishns, exquise taste: How To Be Gay works hard to unpack the stereotypil characteristics of gay male culture and succeeds monstratg how the tat of pathology and the rise of a post-Stonewall ethos of hypermascule self-termatn nspire to shut down a ank quiry to the persistence of such ‘faggy’ tras.

13 VERY GAY AND VERY GOOD BOOKS YOU SHOULD READ THIS PRI MONTH

Rather, Halper’s book is an terventn agast those who tmpet the ‘ath of gay culture’ (which he argu has been clared for over 40 years now) now that wing tolerance and greater visibily of gays the media should make Judy Garland, show tun, and drag queens obsolete… Halper’s h re-evaluatn of the theory and practice of mp is one of his most fascatg sights… Halper mak a se for mp as polilly subversive and a se study for the plited stcture of gay intifitn… One gets the sense that Halper anticipat his greatt tractors to not be social nservativ (though he has been their pariah the past), but stead to be other gay men who fear the sentialism of acknowledgg the role a distct gay culture plays shapg gay inty… Halper narrat the history of this mascule reactn agast gay culture, cullg om his own memori the 70s of how newly ‘liberated’ gay men appropriated the machismo of biker culture, mtach, and nstctn worker clothg to bat the stereotype of the pathetic queens and fairi of the prev generatn. This is a valuable history lson to rears om subsequent generatns given that the signifiers of ’70s gay masculy are now nsired the mpy light of The Village People, and th part of the gay culture om which today’s champns of machismo and normaly try to distance their selv. “How To Be Gay mak for as fun a viewg pann [to Mildred Pierce and Mommie Deart] as do a rigoroly telligent read… Whether you’re well-versed all thgs gay or tend to avoid pop divas at all sts, How To Be Gay offers a h perspective on what we ll gay culture, why so many of love what we love and why we’re aaid to talk about .

Still, the very specter of ‘gay inty’ a world where, for many, tegratn is viewed as the ultimate civil-rights victory, evably sparks ntroversy… His exhstive exploratn of the ins and idsyncrasi associated wh gay inty holds up a floor-length mirror to an entire subculture. Halper terprets gayns through tradnal pop culture preoccupatns like goln age Hollywood, opera, and Broadway mils, focg on Joan Crawford ( particular her role Mildred Pierce) and Faye Dunaway’s notorly over-the-top portrayal of the star Mommie Deart.

What he n be ncerned about, seems, is the culture of Gay, passed down through generatns of slappers, proppg up the bars of Soho London, Chelsea New York, and the Marais Paris, all quarters which are now as ad as the proverbial Halper has wrten an over-long book, more lolised s applitn than he seems fully to appreciate, about the aspects of beg gay other than sexual choice. Outsi Ameri, he reliably gets thgs wrong, suggtg that Bollywood mils may reprent the same sort of gay cult to Indian gay men that Sex and the Cy do to Amerins – he's clearly never seen a film a Calcutta cema, or he would have noticed that the appeal is not a gay thg at all at s source. He don't wre about cloth, or gtur, or ga, or any of what intifi a gay man to another at 80 pac, or the syntax and vobulary and slang which mak them mutually clear at closer quarters – I mean, you n't always be sayg "Have you seen Mommie Deart?

BOOK REVIEW: MAKG GAY OKAY: HOW RATNALIZG HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVR CHANG EVERYTHG

Elsewhere, lists of gay-nnected activi n stretch to surprisg plac: "beg gay had somethg to do wh likg Broadway mils, or listeng to show tun or torch songs or Judy Garland, or playg the piano, wearg fluffy sweaters, drkg cktails, smokg cigarett and llg each other 'girliend'. Elsewhere, Halper wonrs whether gay culture is dyg out, on the basis that – he claims – straight people bought up the ho of gay people after they died of Aids the 1980s and 90s, and that the numbers of gay bars major ci are on the cle om peaks the 70s.

An tertg book about gay culture would spend time wh a range of gay men, of different ag and class and backgrounds, fdg out how their social works were formed, as well as vtigatg how they liked to be urse, that would be a great al harr than jt gog on about a uple of scen om 40s movi that you and your iends simply adore. You'd hardly gus, om Halper's acunt, that gay culture was anythg but owned and monstrated by late-middle-aged whe men about four Amerin cultural nfince is driven on by s ual fuel, money – some time soon the ccial gay diva will not be Lady Gaga, but Fish Leong. If they ever read this book, which they won't, they would probably put their hands to their throat the gture known to German gays as "the necklace of pearls", roll their ey, and say what we always say of a tragic effort all round – "Pur-lease.

BOOK REVIEWS: GAY BOOKS FOR THE SOUL

Out there on the dreary plas, Halper stcts stunts who uld be his grandsons irony, archns, melodramatic flouncg, the worship of Judy Garland and all the other queeny foibl and fetish that most of thought had been disrd when gay men marched out of the closet and asserted their right to rpect and acceptance. That charge was dropped, and MIT sent him off on study leave for a uple of years; his next amic appotment, however, was faraway Atralia, where he n't have ma many iends if he imperialistilly announced, as he do his book, that "beg gay is like beg Amerin" and prented himself as the proselytisg agent of "total, global queerns".

A MEMOIR ABOUT QUEER INTY, TOLD ONE GAY BAR AT A TIME

His book vot lerally hundreds of pag to the obssive analysis of a tfight between Joan Crawford and her bchy dghter the film noir Mildred Pierce, wh footnot on Faye Dunaway's maenadic impersonatn of Crawford on the rampage wh a at-hanger Mommie Deart and Sofia Coppola – the distguished profsor, cintally, misspells her name – lewdly mimickg both Crawford and Dunaway a mic vio for Sonic abive enunter between Crawford and Ann Blyth Mildred Pierce is, for Halper, a Frdian primal scene, an thorative primer om which gay men n learn how to be ersatz women, sufferg wh grandiloquent flair while rollg their ey and sptg epigrammatic put-downs at each other. This swishg mak me wonr whether al-Qaida's fanatics may have a pot about the nce of the the 1960s, San Sontag – whose Not on Camp articulated a few fleet aphorisms most of what Halper spends more than 500 pag paraphrasg – weled a new gay formalist style cricism by clarg: "In place of a hermentics we need an erotics of art.

5 BOOKS GAY MEN CAN READ TO IMPROVE THEIR LIV

Inspired by the notor unrgraduate urse of the same tle that Halper tght at the Universy of Michigan, provokg cri of outrage om both the right-wg media and the gay prs, How To Be Gay trac gay men’s cultural difference to the social meang of style.

In orr to move forward is necsary to look at where the fenrs of marriage failed to make their se and to unrstand why the tth about marriage failed to nvce activist the stggle to pass state referenda fg marriage as the unn of one man and one woman, the fenrs of marriage foced on the posive aspects of marriage and sentially ignorg the problems herent the gay and lbian liftyle.

HOW TO BE GAY

If, as most societi have held, homosexual acts are wrong, then, acrdg to Reilly, such acts nnot be the basis for the ntract of send half of the book als wh the effect of the gay agenda on children, science, tn, the ary, and foreign policy. When argug before urts and legislatur for legal protectn, the lbian, gay, bisexual, and transgenr (LGBT) activists sisted that they were victims and accedg to their mands would protect them om abe, and would not negatively affect anyone else, Reilly talogu how, as the tle of his book claims, makg gay okay and ratnalizg homosexual behavr chang everythg and not for the LGBT activists argued that, when me to sexual ethics, one group should not be allowed to impose their moraly on others. The LGBT activists label all those who do not accept their agenda as homophobic and transphobic bigots, who need to be reted, punished, or trac the shameful history of how the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn (APA) was manipulated by gay activists, surrenred to protters and allowed a rigged referendum.

AdvertisementSKIP Jeremy Atherton LWhen you purchase an penntly reviewed book through our se, we earn an affiliate 9, 2021GAY BARWhy We Went OutBy Jeremy Atherton LHistory, as is tght, is a straight le of domo fallg — the relentls clack of fact htg fact, an orrly que of aly stretchg on forever. History, as is lived, is a reelg spiral of flight and return; the erative reawakeng of new selv faiar plac; a never-endg terrogatn of our own nfed and nfg motiv; a msy slather of dots on a graph where the center n be plotted only Atherton L’s betiful, lyril memoir, “Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, ” cloaks this lived history that learned history, examg an objective subject — gay bars — to create a highly subjective object: a book about his life, flensed down to jt the bs that ma past the chapter foc on one particular gay bar (jumpg om London to Los Angel to San Francis and back), s history and s place the trajectory of Atherton L’s life.

Atherton L himself is renred only relatn to the bars he walks through; you’ll fd yourself hard-prsed at the end to say where he was born or how many siblgs he has (and you won’t re) Atherton L has a five-octave, Mariah Carey-que range for discsg gay sex. When he discs an important 1966 prott at the historic Greenwich Village gay bar Juli’, he c a New York Tim article to talk about the “tr of activists” volved — not realizg that the article left out a fourth man, Randy Wicker (the only one still alive, cintally enough) a half page later, though, Atherton L warns that spe the activist claim that gay bars “should be kept open to facilate knowledge passg between generatns, ” he himself had never really received gay wisdom “on a barstool. ” This book is not about history, the subject you study, but history, that thg you have wh that guy by the jebox whose name you n’t the fal chapter of “Gay Bar, ” Atherton L grappl wh gog to a new generatn of bars, created by very different forc, meetg very different needs.

YOU CAN'T READ THAT! BANNED BOOK REVIEW: THIS BOOK IS GAY

“Billy’s Boy” n be read as a stand-alone book; is about a teenager’s search to learn more about his ad gay father and his lbian mother’s past, as he experienc his own sexual HOURS (1998)By Michael CunnghamAward the 1999 Pulzer Prize for fictn, “The Hours” is a riff on Virga Woolf’s “Mrs.

Grapplg wh feelgs of aquacy the lavish “lookg-glass world, ” he disvers metropolan gay life through a iendship wh Leo, a civil MASTER (2004)By Colm ToibThis novel, set between 1895 and 1899, treads the le between fictn and bgraphy, explorg the later life of Henry Jam, the wrer known as “the Master. ” Colm Toib imag, wh vivid tail, members of Jam’s circle — like his voted manservant, Burgs Noak — as well as Jam’s feelgs of guilt, regret and homosexual CALDA (2005)By Keh McDermottThis novel by longtime theater actor Keh McDermott follows Gerald Bart, a retired actor sufferg om AIDS. McDermott ptur theater life well, and f the book wh an ternatnal st of HOME (2006)A Fay TragiicBy Alison BechlIn this acclaimed graphic memoir, which was turned to a Tony Award-wng Broadway mil, Alison Bechl — a rtoonist also known for creatg the Bechl tt, a standard for judgg the qualy of women’s onscreen rol — scrib both g out and g to terms wh her closeted gay father’s ath.

IS TROYE SIVAN’S ‘RH’ SEXY FUN OR GAY DETR?

Wh sensivy and a ep nnectn to the girls, Beam scrib their stggl wh transng and how they rencile them wh more faiar teenage ncerns like csh and BOY (2009)By Rakh SatyalKiran Sharma, a 12-year-old gay Indian-Amerin boy, choos ballet over basketball and wears his mother’s perfume to school, beg a social outst and upendg his parents’ expectatns. This but novel is a betiful twist on the gay g-of-age KIDS (2010)By Patti SmhWner of the 2010 Natnal Book Award for nonfictn, this memoir documents Smh’s relatnship wh Robert Mapplethorpe, a photographer later known for his sadomasochistic imagery, before he me out as gay. HalperIn this provotive book, the thor, a profsor of history and sexualy theory at the Universy of Michigan, Ann Arbor, argu that is not only their sexual preferenc that distguish gay men om straight on, but also their culture, cludg "diva worship” and “adoratn of glamour.

AD 2009) a Large CyBy Choire SichaThis book, prented as nonfictn, is set the recent past New York Cy and follows a group of young gay men — though the word gay is never ed — as they date, drk and navigate the plexi of work and fdg love New York Cy. The book’s central character is Ju, who has a troubled past that unfolds slowly; Yanagihara provis sharp sight to his stggl as a disabled gay THE UDALA TREES (2015)By Chelo OkparantaThis story, set durg a btal civil war Nigeria the late 1960s, starts when Ijeoma, whose father is killed an air raid and whose mother is so affected she nnot re for her child, is sent to live wh her mother’s iend another town.

By g a few well-chosen cultural artifacts as exampl (Joan Crawford, "Mildred Pierce, " and "Mommy Deart"), he builds a rhetoril stcture that is flexible enough to acmodate the many other maniftatns of gay sensibily-- other divas and mp classics, as well as entirely different bs of heterosexual culture that gay men appropriate and re wh a queer meang. Especially strong are his pots about the nstant generatnal stggl over "gay culture" (ak to those of femism), the simultaneoly aristocratic and mocratizg sensibili mp athetics, and the persistg relevance of mp for gay men the post-Stonewall age, where explic, und imag of gays are supposed to have supplanted the shameful intifitn wh melodrama and ritur of female power (ha! He spends many pag explag exactly how pre-pubcent boys sted to bee gay men me to our love of var gay stereotypil activi and obssns, whether be Judy Garland, Joan Crawford, grand opera, historic buildgs, arrangg furnure or flower arrangg, and clearly we did not learn the thgs om one another at such a tenr age.