On September 22, 1998, the first installment of a gay erotic novel appeared on the now-defunct website Chinese Men's and Boys' Paradise (Zhongguo nanren nanhai tiantang). The book—originally called Dalu gushi (A Story From the Mainland)—quickly gained cult fame in China's gay community. It was one of (if not the) first self-reflexively gay novels to be published in any form in mainland China, as well as the first Chinese novel to be written natively on the Internet. This month, thanks to the Feminist Press, it is about to be published for the first time in English, under the title Beijing Comrades. Yet to this day, the true author—variously referred to as Bei Tong, Miss Wang, Beijing Comrade, Ling-Hui, and Xiao He—remains a mystery.
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The Assemblage of Norman Hasselriis
I first encountered Norman Hasselriis in the summer of 1987. Barely nine years old, I was far too young to understand his work. A child of the suburbs and the city, I found rural life freaky, and didn’t get my parent’s perverse desire to spend our summers traipsing around the Catskill mountains visiting one potential death trap after another. Inevitably, there were no serial killers in the barns we toured or monsters in the campgrounds we slept in, but that always felt like a lucky accident. When we stumbled across Hasselriis’ store in the hamlet of Oak Hill (population 277, as of the 2010 census), I was convinced that we’d finally found our local Ed Gein.
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Meet 'The Tenth,' A Slick New Magazine For Queer Black Men
Where a mainstream fashion magazine might do a special "black issue," like Italian Vogue back in 2008, or a black lifestyle magazine might run a queer feature, the perspective of queer black folks tends to occupy occasional outskirts in fashion and lifestyle glossies, never the mainstay. The Tenth, a new print magazine by and for queer black men, now on its third issue, wants to help change that, at least from the POV of its founders
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Originally published on the Vice blog BROADLY. Read the original here. (Image via the Happy Birthday Marsha IndieGogo page.)
'Happy Birthday Marsha' Shows What the Gay Rights Movement Owes Trans People
So this story seeks to intervene on the idea that we have to be respectable in order to matter. We have to be white, or be outside of prison, or have a certain type of class access. Because we historically have seen, time and time again, that people who are navigating huge forms of violence have been consistently doing powerful acts of self-determination. I think it's really important to remember our history and how the past isn't past: It's actually playing out right now. If we're not talking about people in prison while we're talking about trans people, we're not talking about trans people.
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Photos from MIX, NYC's Premier Queer Film Festival
Enter MIX Festival, New York City's annual queer experimental film festival extravaganza. Now in its 28th incarnation, MIX transformed a raw warehouse space into a 24/7 art and film hub from November 10 to 15, comprising thousands of square feet of installations (including a massive yarn-and-fabric work by Diego Montoya), screening spaces, artists, and activists. Every year, the event is spearheaded by the people it represents, meaning "queer" is standard and "experimental" is always to be expected.
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Originally published on Vice. Read the original here.
Talking with Director Todd Haynes about 'Carol,' Lesbian Love, and the Impossibility of Indie Films
There have been unbelievable legislative triumphs that are essential and correct and humane, but there's been all kinds of losses along the way. Really, I think what it's about is capitalism has won, and there's not even a language for standing outside the market and being critical of the market and seeing it as something one can stand outside of and speak coherently about from the margins.
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'Jason And Shirley' Wonders If A Classic Queer Black Film Told The Whole Story
So was Jason Holliday exploited into presenting a less-than-ideal version of himself, for sensationalistic effect? Or were he and Clarke engaged in a mutually beneficial (if adversarial) act of co-creation? Even a half century later, "it's impossible to know how upset he is or whether the tragic gay man on screen is just an act," Manohla Dargis said in her 2013 New York Times review celebrating Portrait of Jason's re-release.
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First transgender suicide hotline overcomes growing pains
In 2013, at one of the lowest points in her life, 44-year-old software engineer Greta Martela placed a call to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. She had been hospitalized five times for being suicidal, starting at age 28, when she realized she was transgender. But she was still struggling with coming out to the wider world. When she disclosed to the counselor that she was transgender, he was confused about what that meant. Once she explained, “he got off the phone as quick as he could,” she said.
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