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The Public Blogging of Pomosexuality, Homotextuality, Homophobiaphilia, and Drear Theory (aka Career Theory) [aka Gay4Pay]. We also read the Corner and OpJournal so the right buttock will be punished as well.
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Sometimes the old press releases are the best. This one is quite cold off the presses, but it just came to my, always distracted, attention:
New Study Links Homophobia with Homosexual Arousal
...Men in both groups were aroused by about the same degree by the video depicting heterosexual sexual behavior and by the video showing two women engaged in sexual behavior. The only significant difference in degree of arousal between the two groups occurred when they viewed the video depicting male homosexual sex: 'The homophobic men showed a significant increase in penile circumference to the male homosexual video, but the control [nonhomophobic] men did not.'
Broken down further, the measurements showed that while 66% of the nonhomophobic group showed no significant tumescence while watching the male homosexual video, only 20% of the homophobic men showed little or no evidence of arousal. Similarly, while 24% of the nonhomophobic men showed definite tumescence while watching the homosexual video, 54% of the homophobic men did.
The 54% figure is not surprising. And that 24% result is nothing to shake a stick at either. The study's authors do, however, give the tumescent viewers of Tiger's Tails an emergency exit from the obvious:
Do these findings mean, then, that homophobia in men is a reaction to repressed homosexual urges, as psychoanalysis theorizes? While their findings are consistent with that theory, the authors note that there is another, competing theoretical explanation: anxiety. According to this theory, viewing the male homosexual videotape may have caused negative emotions (such as anxiety) in the homophobic men, but not in the nonhomophobic men. As the authors note, 'anxiety has been shown to enhance arousal and erection,' and so it is also possible that 'a response to homosexual stimuli [in these men] is a function of the threat condition rather than sexual arousal per se. These competing notions can and should be evaluated by future research.'
EastWest mag said some nice things about us the other day. Been meaning to mention that site anyway. Very Interesting content made more interesting by the fact that all of it is pretty much the work of 2 guys. Not exactly the Salon business model. And the backstory has wings:
Philo and Choire met in a San Francisco court house in 1991 following a civil disobedience arraignment, though the friendship took hold later that day at a demonstration to stop the police harassment of sex workers. Later, while working on a cable access television show, the two became roommates and have been fast friends ever since. This website is the by-product of their continued friendship, while now separated on opposite coasts of the United States.
And dig those handles, Philo and Choire. I'd say they were fated to meet, arraignment or not.
Beautiful too how they show the East Coast and West Coast blog-bangers that there is another way.
The cats are secret christians poem that Eve Tushnet posts is great. And so is this book. Our second William B. link this week. It's the one book of his that even the Burroughs haters might like. Perhaps even cat haters will like it. Possibly it will even charm dogs. And make mice uncomfortable in their prejudices.
9:52 PM
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I Saw a Movie Many Times
I've always been curious about exactly how gay Brazilian pop music is, both because I love Brazilian pop music and because I am forever curious about how gay any and everything is. Brazil might already be post-gay in an omnisexual kind of way (or maybe that makes it pre-gay), and maybe I'm trying to jam it in a drawer that it doesn't fit. So sue me, Brazil.
I'm not even sure how popular the music I think of as Brazilian pop really is in Brazil. I used to listen to a lot of Brazilian radio over the net and I didn't hear much of what I love the most, namely the songfather, the late Carlos Jobim, and his descendants-- Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso. I know that these guys are gods of Brazilian culture, but whether great crowds still worship in their churches I can't say. I hope so. Gilberto Gil was just named Minister of Culture in Brazil, but I take that to be a bad omen for his relevance there today.
I found a record by Nascimento today from 1989 called Miltons. The first song on it us called River Phoenix (letter to a young actor). It's a love song to the martyr of the Viper Room, the Sunset Strip's sidewalk ghost. Except that River was still warm and flowing when Milton wrote it, just after seeing Phoenix in the movie The Mosquito Coast. The lyrics I found online are less artful than the translation in the CD but they save me the trouble of copying them here:
If someday we meet each other
and I confess
I saw a movie many times
to unmask your eyes
And if we talk
tell the things that lived
what we expect of tomorrow
Can it happen?
Therefore, parallel the character,
I really wanted to know about you
I’d like you were happy
a calm water to flood
your bank of concern
an open chest to arrive
With your name, different
A scenery persuade us
A scenery of innocence
But that know and conduct
Conduct now this moment
The thought and my eyes
shining of emotion and grateful
someone who only knew you
in a movie that he saw many times
that wrote this poem
I did a search and learned that this wasn't Milton's only genuflection at River's altar. The wordless Ol' Man River on a later record, Nascimento, is in River's memory--I'd heard that song but didn't know of this earlier one, so never made the connection.
Miltons also includes a song titled Semen. When I saw the title on the CD I assumed it was a false cognate, that Semen had to be Portuguese for, well, ANYTHING else. I was wrong:
My walking through the world is my way of sowing
The grain of life, the germ of life that will multiply
My song is the semen of life that I throw in the air
To sing is the party of passion
News today of a scientific study comparing the abilities 50 pairs of twins who share the profile of one twelve-months-clean-drug-using-twin (heavy user of cocaine and/or amphetamines) and one never-used-in-the-first-place-twin. A year after abstaining from drugs the formerly high half of the zygote still:
performed significantly worse than their nonuser twins in the areas of motor skills and attention. However, the former drug users did much better on one test of attention that measured visual vigilance.
Which explains junkies' seeming extra sensory awareness of any drugs in the vicinity, any money to buy drugs in the vicinity, any soft touch suckers in the vicinity, and any moveable property in the vicinity that can be turned into cash to pay for drugs or directly traded at 2 cents on the dollar for drugs.
The two greatest gay junky/user novels? But I repeat myself:
Junky User
Note the cut to the chase titles and the laser like visual vigilance on display inside.
I saw someone in a chat room write Los Angeles as Losa Ngeles the other night and liked it immediately. I think it was a typo. I googled Losa Ngeles to see if it was already established and the few dozen hits seemed mostly mistaken spellings. One company offering the WORLD'S LOWEST PRICES--electric adjustable beds, hospital beds, lift-chairs, shiatsu massage loungers, scooters and carts, cart-lifts, Jazzys and wheelchairs, power-chair lifts, seat lift chairs came up as a hit because hidden in its meta tags was a list of every conceivable misspelling for most of California's big cities. It looks in part like this.