Alive & Gay Anti-Intellectualism: Alive & Well

[bluenix]

[blockquote]When the gay movement has shriveled down to unscrupulous, incoherent, mewling philistines who don't read books and resent those that do, American culture is the big loser.

 

The larger issue is that gay life in the U.S. has increasingly become a cultural wasteland.

 

-- Camille Paglia [/blockquote]

 

I've never liked her. But she does have a way of reducing cultural noise to coherent if right-wing essentials. Americans have a long and (nearly) honorable history of anti-intellectualism. But I wonder if we're aware of the extent to which, when we exercise it on ourselves we are at a disadvantage.

 

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1975

 

Carry on.

[Guest SeaGuy]

>The larger issue is that gay life in the U.S. has

>increasingly become a cultural wasteland.[/i]

>

> -- Camille Paglia

 

To Ms. Paglia I ask- is it just gay life that has become a cultural wasteland? As for Ms. Paglia's status as an "intellectual", please! she's nothing more than a celebrity conscious poseur and hack who makes completely insubstantial and inflammatory comments. If gay life in the US is a "cultural wasteland"; she's done nothing to elevate it. :o

[Guest Fin Fang Foom]

>To Ms. Paglia I ask- is it just gay life that has become a

>cultural wasteland? As for Ms. Paglia's status as an

>"intellectual", please! she's nothing more than a celebrity

>conscious poseur and hack who makes completely insubstantial

>and inflammatory comments. If gay life in the US is a

>"cultural wasteland"; she's done nothing to elevate it. :o

 

Thank you. You prove her point in the article beautifully.

 

Intellectually yours,

 

FFF

[Guest in yer face]

"Camille is full of Shit"

-Madonna

 

Paglias assumption that gay life is a cultural wasteland is based on the assumption that gay life is somehow supposed to be more elevated than any other group of people. The fact remains that we are just a bunch of guys and girls doing our thing. Whether is partying on drugs or going to the Opera.

 

Essayists like Paglia exist simply to write their retoric and polorize the issues in order to make a living. Sometimes I wondeer if they believe half the shit they write. I wonder if shoe ever wonders in a weak moment if someone will realize what a fraud she is. Or perhaps, in the middle of a reading at the Union Square Barnes and Noble, if she ever silently thinks to herself "Man, I am so full of shit."

 

This board in and of itself is a cultural wasteland. However, I Socrates said, "Man is a social animal". And so here we are.

[+ Lucky]

Who gives a flying fuck what she thinks?

[Guest jon guy]

>"Camille is full of Shit"

>-Madonna

 

maybe, but when you read the article, she seems to be making some reasonable points. To me, she does not seem to be attacking the sort of 'elevated philistinism' that her quote about 'not reading books' suggests, but the fact that the majority of those who do push 'gay' political positions have not altered their oppression based mentalities of the 60s.

 

Things have indeed moved on - notably, especially in this country (UK) over the last decade. Sure, this has had the advantage of normalising the politicisation of non-heterosexual groups within society - which surely is a good thing. but read paglia's article! the points she makes re. calls for greater tolerance within the 'queer' community and the elitist, maybe, but sensible call for an updated political consicousness which accomodates all sorts of positions seem eminantly reasonable.

 

or am i just an outsider who doesn't understand the fierce sensitivities which are evoked by the pronouncements of ms paglia?

 

 

 

:-) jon guy. http://www.jonguy.com

[Will]

Camille Paglia makes herself an easy target. She is implacably solipcistic. She is so eager to fire off barbed one-liners in a humorless burlesque of Noel Coward that she dulls her point while sharpening her rhetoric. She's forever lifting her leg on trees in the territory where only the recklessly outspoken need enter. Like the Stalinist Soviets, she always claims to have invented the telephone or the computer or, in this case, libertarianism. Most of all, Camille Paglia revels in pissing people off. Particularly gay men. In that regard, she has been spectacularly successful on this thread.

 

While all of that may make her hard to take, none of it makes her wrong. Nor does it make her stupid, nor does it disqualify her as an intellectual, which in my book means a person whose stock-in-trade is ideas, whether they're good ideas or bad ideas. Although I wish she were less narcissistic and less addicted to public attention, to my way of thinking Camille Paglia is an extremely intelligent, maybe even brilliant, thinker. In particular, her early work, such as SEXUAL PERSONAE, was ground-breaking and in fact has already altered the public perception of some historical figures who were either despised or misunderstood. Although she's not responsible for the massive public re-evaluation of Oscar Wilde that's been underway for the past few years, she is very much in the company of those who prepared the general public to make OSCAR, for example, a mainstream movie-house item. That is no small accomplishment, and all you have to do is compare it with the reception of Richard Chamberlain's movie about another nineteenth-century gay artist, Tchaikovsky.

 

"There was a time," Paglia writes, "when gay men were known for their scathingly independent minds and their encyclopedic knowledge of culture." That is true. It is also true, I believe, that gay men who use their "scathingly independent minds" in even the most benign places such as M4M very often suffer the consequences that Paglia laments in this article. Like Paglia, some of our sharpest minds on this board frequently annoy the average reader so much that they alienate rather than persuade their audience. That's bad rhetoric, but not necessarily bad thinking. I fully understand and even agree with those who at times find their posts so repellent, so gratuitously vicious, so beyond the pale of decency that they don't warrant response, let alone agreement. But I have to say that my rejection of these men -- and, along with them, their points of view -- is often based not on my rational consideration of their ideas but on my emotional response to their rhetoric.

 

It's the substitution of emotion for reason as an arbiter of ideas that bothers me a very great deal, and for many reasons. Most germane to this thread is that when emotion rather than reason guides us through a minefield of ideas, we tend to fall back on the reductive, tendentious, and quite often grotesquely simplified versions of those arguments we are rejecting. That not only makes us looks stupid. It also runs the danger of blowing up in our faces.

 

Whatever I may think of Camille Paglia's carefully crafted public persona, and whatever I may think of her ideas, I would strongly argue that she is among the most articulate, influential, and original thinkers about gay/lesbian issues in the public eye today. So are Gore Vidal and Andrew Sullivan. (Whatever one thinks of Sullivan's alleged notions about barebacking, it's important to remember that for intellectuals the dick and the brain are not in the same head.) So were Bruce Bawer (A PLACE AT THE TABLE) and John Boswell (CHRISTIANITY, SOCIAL TOLERANCE, AND HOMOSEXUALITY). But all of these, and many more, writers have been vilified, not just criticized, by representatives of the Gay Post-Modernist Left (which is very different from the Gay Modernist Left), one of whom has as much as canonized Michel Foucault (see David Halperin, SAINT FOUCAULT).

 

What are their sins against the tribe? Gore Vidal believes in high culture and comes from a family of American aristocrats; Andrew Sullivan is a Catholic and, now, a Neo-Conservative; Bruce Bawer wrote from the position of a Christian capitalist; and John Boswell, who is by far the biggest sinner in this group, dared to say that there were gay people and gay culture before the middle of the nineteenth century. That position made him an "Essentialist" rather than a "Constructionist" and he was therefore The Enemy. Never mind that he was the first distinguished historian of the Medieval Europe to document the close relationship between culture and homosexual behavior between about 400 and 1400.

 

You can't have saints without sinners. And you can't have either one without a judge. And in highly emotional public discourse judges are self-appointed. I don't want to be tried by a judge who's already decided my fate. I want to be tried by a libertarian judge, a judge who believes in the freedom/liberty of the person and that person's ideas. And I want to be heard in a truly libertarian forum. That is, a place where people attack ideas -- sometimes fiercely -- but never persons. The fact that I like chocolate ice cream is not an argument; the fact that the butterfat in chocolate ice cream overrides its aesthetic benefits is, indeed, an argument. But most of us would rather talk about how delicious chocolate ice cream is and will resent, even if silently, those who remind us that chocolate ice cream does not feel about me the way I feel about it.

 

There's a whole lot more to be said on this subject, but -- you'll be glad to know -- that's all for now.

[Guest SeaGuy]

I prove her point by my lack of respect and/or admiration for her body of work. Alright, if you say so. Seems like a no win situation.

 

Her points about "Cultural Stalinism" are well taken but again this phenomena has by no means been limited to "gay culture"( a paradox if there ever was one). Power; cultural, political, and economic, has been concentrated and tightened into an ever smaller circle narrowing the view of life along with it. This is true of America and the industrial/post-industrial west in general. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world of mass media and entertainment of which Ms. Paglia is part, although she and few others may beg to differ. Michel Foucault , whom she derides as "anti-humanist"(this is far from accurate), contributed much to enhance the way people can and should think about the world. His "History of Sexuality" alone grants him a place in the canon. The same cannot be said of Ms. Paglia. Perhaps she should rant less and do/think more. I'll take Martha Nussbaum over her any day, to name but one of Paglia's American counterparts, albeit one of true intellect and with no newspaper column and little to no media presence. ;-)

[Guest newawlens]

>It is

>also true, I believe, that gay men who use their "scathingly

>independent minds" in even the most benign places such as

>M4M very often suffer the consequences that Paglia laments

>in this article. Like Paglia, some of our sharpest minds on

>this board frequently annoy the average reader so much that

>they alienate rather than persuade their audience. That's

>bad rhetoric, but not necessarily bad thinking. I fully

>understand and even agree with those who at times find their

>posts so repellent, so gratuitously vicious, so beyond the

>pale of decency that they don't warrant response, let alone

>agreement. But I have to say that my rejection of these men

>-- and, along with them, their points of view -- is often

>based not on my rational consideration of their ideas but on

>my emotional response to their rhetoric.

>

>It's the substitution of emotion for reason as an arbiter of

>ideas that bothers me a very great deal, and for many

>reasons. Most germane to this thread is that when emotion

>rather than reason guides us through a minefield of ideas,

>we tend to fall back on the reductive, tendentious, and

>quite often grotesquely simplified versions of those

>arguments we are rejecting. That not only makes us looks

>stupid. It also runs the danger of blowing up in our faces.

 

 

That is an excellent point. What I have found most disappointing about this message board is the narrow-mindedness of the people who post here frequently. It sounds strange to call gay men who hire prostitutes narrow-minded, but to me many posters show the same unwillingness to consider other ideas as many evangelical Christians I know. The only difference between the two groups is that they adhere to different sets of dogmas. They're alike in refusing to seriously consider ideas that differ from their own and also alike in automatically assigning 'evil' or other negative personal qualities to those who hold ideas that differ from their own.

[Rick Munroe]

>She is implacably solipcistic.

 

OK, now that has to be the best drag name I've ever heard. "Put your hands together for Miss Implacably Solipcistic!" Will, if you ever don a wig, you must take that name.

 

>She's forever lifting her leg on trees in the territory where

>only the recklessly outspoken need enter.

 

And this is my new favorite sentence of the week. You're on a roll, mister. :*

[+ Axiom2001]

She cited her thoughts; now what do you THINK?

[phage]

>or am i just an outsider who doesn't understand the fierce

>sensitivities which are evoked by the pronouncements of ms

>paglia?

 

It’s not this particular message – it’s the messenger. (See Will’s most excellent response.) She is just one of those people that some of us love to hate, and as much as I often agree with the little bombs she lobs our way, it’s on a purely intellectual level. I have an almost visceral response to the ranting that SeaGuy mentions.

 

One particular statement kind of made me laugh. She said, “I despise dogma in all its forms.” Maybe I don’t completely understand the meaning of the word. Isn’t she one of the reigning Queens of Dogma?

[Guest albinorat]

Good points, Will, in my opinion. But I also agree with the poster who said "Gay" life was a lot like 'straight' life. Who could imagine something like rap would be called music and dominate popular culture? Who could have imagined in 1961 (with Sinatra a star) that most pop singers could not carry a tune but would be making tens of millions? Who could have imagined (in 1940) 8 TV's in every house and 'talk TV' which almost NEVER (and in the mainstream such as "Jay" and Letterman ABSOLUTELY Never)has anyone on to talk who had something interesting to say? Who would imagine chance celebrity would be next to godliness and those would be the only greatly and widely admired people in our 'civilization'? Who would imagine a culture where 'general knowledge' as it would have been among most high schoolers in 1938 has vanished as both a concept and a fact?

 

Gay life brings with it some specific on going and perennial problems for participants. Though there are more "marriages" (even without legal sanction as such), and more married gay people raise children (things that were inconceivable in 1983), many gay men (possibly the majority though it would be hard to come up with a percentage with any certainty) age into outcasts within their very 'gay culture', they find no comfort there. And that culture leaves its most successful denizens (those under say 35) without values or skills with which to face middle age.

 

Lip service gets paid to things like 'settling down' and the rest of it, but we of all people know just how insincere that is. It doesn't surprise me that AIDS rates among gay men under 30 are going up. The culture suggests age is worse than death, that life is unimaginable with a middle aged body (for those on the circuit it is), that sexual power is the only comfort and point of identity a young gay man can imagine. When that gets ripped away from him he literally has no place to go -- but Hoo-boy's site if he's got the bucks.

 

I agree about Paglia, Will. She plays the self-promotion game hard and has written her share of silly things. But unpopular people like her and the confusing Andrew Sullivan perform a valuable service IMO to a group that has no intellectual life or committment to "lasting values" even just to debate them (unlike Conservative Republicans and Devout Christians/Jew/Muslims -- groups that certainly make me very uncomfortable).

 

AL

[Will]

>Good points, Will, in my opinion. But I also agree with the

>poster who said "Gay" life was a lot like 'straight' life.

>Who could imagine something like rap would be called music

>and dominate popular culture?

 

I completely agree with you. In the hours since I wrote that first post, I've been thinking about "gay culture," which I myself have called an oxymoron. At the moment -- it's 2:10 on Sunday afternoon and by this time tomorrow I may have changed my mind -- I think we may be seeing an effect of gay liberation. That is, being "gay" is no longer being "special." For the past several years, the overwhelming majority of eighteen-year-olds enter college not knowing why homosexuality is such a big deal. In fact, it's not even chic anymore to be gay. You have to be "queer," and being "queer" means that you have to adopt some mannerism or costume that helps everybody know that you're "queer." The closet door is wide open, my dear, and all those old drag costumes are now worn on the street in the full light of day, right in front of God and everybody.

 

Just as the population of self-described gay men in American society begins to parallel the general population, so, too, we are going to see the same majority-based signs of cultural popularity among gay people that appear among straight people. I think it's inevitable. And I don't think it's a bad thing at all.

 

>1983), many gay men (possibly the majority though it would

>be hard to come up with a percentage with any certainty) age

>into outcasts within their very 'gay culture', they find no

>comfort there. And that culture leaves its most successful

>denizens (those under say 35) without values or skills with

>which to face middle age.

 

Well, if cultural leveling isn't a bad thing, what you very rightly point to here is a bad thing indeed. The net effect of ridicule and shame on the lives of individual persons is the same, whether the ostracizers are gay or straight. Only once in my life have I been gratuitously and appallingly insulted, in public and at an operatic "alta voce" decibel level, and that was in a gay bar. I walked in with three friends who were also in their late thirties or early forties. I was only just coming out, and wasn't entirely comfortable in a gay bar. But I made myself go, and I was the first to step into the room. The second I appeared, one of the large number of twenty-something fags sitting at the bar pointed his finger at me and screamed, "Oh look, Larry, there's your date for the evening." Larry, the screamer, and all their friends burst into laughter. How's that for "gay community?" By the way, if somebody says, "Oh, that was the old days," or, "Consider the source and forget it," or, "That was in the sticks," let them simply step into The Big Cup in Chelsea and see how quickly the temperature drops.

 

One of the bartenders in our local coffeehouse is a 19-year-old Latino Dance major who has the greatest ass in history, creamy skin the color of coffee ice cream, wears clothes as tight as paint; he is also funny, sweet, well-educated and very, very bright. He's just working a college summer job. He picks up extra cash by stripping in one of the gay clubs in the city nearby. The other day he said to me, "I think it's a real tragedy that we don't have any gay community here." "What do you want from it?" I asked. "Well, he said, I want to know older men. After all, we young guys are where we are only because of what you older guys did. But we don't know anything about it. I don't even really know what 'before Stonewall' means." One of my gay colleagues agrees with me that this kid could be a billionaire if he moved to New York and started escorting. He won't. But he's very typical of his generation of fully politicized gay men who are not in the least bit ashamed of or afraid about their sexuality. But they want to know how they got there. And the only people who can tell them are we "older guys."

 

That is, if the youngsters don't throw us onto the trash-heap. There is actually a DISCUSSION (sic) on the Atkol Forums right now about when is a man "too old" to be in porn. How do you like that?

[Guest albinorat]

>In fact,

>it's not even chic anymore to be gay.>

 

There's probably a paper to be written about the trade off involved in 'outsider' status. There are many injustices; but the experience can be enriching too. As you point out the very blandness, anything goes quality of our general culture has impoverished the quality of life experience for people under 45.

 

I have noticed this among 20 somethings who think AIDS is cured and have no historical sense of what those first five years were like. Anyone who lived through them learned a lot about living, the beauty of living, the ugliness and yes, the goodness, of 'ordinary' (ungay) people, and bore witness to extraordinary courage as well as learning something about a terror that no financial security could insulate you from. I've been made fun of by youth for bringing that up.

 

It may be times would be better for gay people if more victims of AIDS had lived; that generation was heavily cut into and with them into the grave went a lot of hard earned wisdom.

 

>The second I appeared, one

>of the large number of twenty-something fags sitting at the

>bar pointed his finger at me and screamed, "Oh look, Larry,

>there's your date for the evening." Larry, the screamer,

>and all their friends burst into laughter. How's that for

>"gay community?" [sNIP] >let them simply step into The

>Big Cup in Chelsea and see how quickly the temperature

>drops.<

 

I used to live right down the street from the Big Cup. I made a point of going in often enough. You are right. But what was curious was how much suffering the beauties did if not enough people were cruising them. It was a double edged sword but a sad symbol of one aspect at least of 'gayness'.

 

As for the mockery believe me I know all about it, having lived in Chelsea for 24 years and seen them descend starting about 1992. What always strikes me is how these people can't imagine they will be

alive and still have feelings and needs at 40 or older. I don't mean therefore that young beauties should abandon themselves to us (God forbid would be the reaction). But a culture that bans empathy, ordinary human respect for others is a culture that will leave a lot of 40 year olds desolate if not dead.

 

>is a 19-year-old Latino. The other day he

>said to me, "I think it's a real tragedy that we don't have

>any gay community here." "What do you want from it?" I

>asked. "Well, he said, I want to know older men.<

 

I think the lack of continuity is a bad thing for everyone. I can remember running away to Manhattan as a 16 year old and getting into gay bars. This was before Stonewall. Though the older guys either paid or did without (often, not always), they were not shunned at all. I learned a lot from these men who had after all lived through a more repessive time. As a kid from a working class background I got to know men of high achievement and great culture and I received a lot of good advice (didn't take some of it) and much kindness.

 

But again the insulation of youth (now devided into segments, tweenies, teens, young adults) from anyone much older has in my opinion weakened the entire culture. It does make you wonder what kind of people this generation will be at 40, gay and straight, and maybe makes one a little relieved that one will probably not care in the least.

 

Al

[BgMstr4u]

"There was a time when gay men were known for their scathingly independent minds and their encyclopedic knowledge of culture."

"When the gay movement has shriveled down to unscrupulous, incoherent, mewling philistines who don't read books and resent those that do, American culture is the big loser."

 

So La Paglia. There is much that can be said against her, and probably should be. She certainly takes the better half of her column puffing her own work. But she makes an important point about the historic place of gay people: as outsiders, often denied access to "normal" economic and professional lives, gay people were forced to live by creativity. That meant being sharp, sharper than the rest, ready to see the next opening and diving into it. Many lives that were often deprived through bigotry were also brilliant. The truth is that civilization NEEDS gay people, and the loss of so many of the last generation to AIDS is a tragic loss for all, not just "gay" culture.

 

Becoming, little by little, accepted, part of the mainstream, etc., inevitably means that gay people are less and less distinctive, less and less forced into lives lived by wits rather than by the book. Hoorah for gay bankers, gay real estate agents, gay bureaucrats, gay teachers and social workers and judges and congressmen and vice-presidential daughters. Hooray for us all. BUT... there is a price, and the price is that precious (in so many senses) sensibility we brought. To have to see every side of a matter, and then discern the side no-one else can see, AND be amusing took a lot of talent. Could the world of modern culture have existed without that sensibility? I doubt it. It may well be that the current triumph of mediocrity and trash ("hip-hop" is music?? as someone noted above) is the triumph of heterosexual talent in a world which needs the gay mind and point of view.

 

All of these are Paglian themes, and thank God she has raised and publicized them.

 

My recommendation: get out of the house more, read and think and talk more and, if need be, hit the gym less. Give the brawn boys their due -- a wistful eye, a wink and a smile, a buck or two if they need it, and dinner if they're hungry, but by no means let them run gay culture. They can't. There will be no culture if abs and biceps substitute for the detailed knowledge of culture current and past.

 

Better still, take the twinks in. Enculturate them. Let them do their part -- the marriage of mind and body is a beautiful thing. The body will fade after the dread 35. The mind can remain around for 50 more. So sharpen up, guys! They need us out there!

[Guest elime]

"It is pain that is indifferent to the sky

In spite of the yellow of the acacias, the scent

Of them in the air still hanging heavily

In the hoary-hanging night. It does not regard

This freedom, this supremacy, and in

Its own hallucination never sees

How that which rejects it save it in the end."

 

From Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

[Will]

The last three posts on this thread are among the classiest I can ever remember reading here. Now this is great stuff -- a Wallace Stevens poem, even! Maybe we should have a thread about what some of the great gay poets have written about escorts. In fact, I think it would be worth the research. Thanks to all!

[Rick Munroe]

>Only once in my life have I been gratuitously

>and appallingly insulted

 

"Appalling" doesn't even begin to describe that scenario. I'm curious, Will: being who you are now, which is worlds away from who you were then, what would you do if you walked into that same bar today and the same thing happened? We all fantasize about past indignities and how we'd do things differently. Have you ever?

[chrismac]

One of the key differences between young straight and young gay people today is that although the youth culture in both cases may parallel each other - once youth has passed, most straight men will settle down, marry, have kids - and live "normal" lives. They'll concentrate on watching sports on weekends with their guy friends at first, then get involved with their kids as they get older. They may divorce, remarry, even have a second set of kids. Many adopt. They'll become grandparents, and life will naturally move along as it has for countless generations.

 

Some gay men will be fortunate enough to find their life's love, but many will go through several (hundreds) of relationships and never find that special person. Many will still be cruising at 40, 50, 60, and so on.

 

It is this spectre of getting old and being alone which strikes many of us as so frightening. The young, whether gay or straight have never cared about the elderly. They don't feel their mortality yet. It comes a little later; sometime in the mid-30s for most. By this time most straight men are married, and have children. They know their future. That IS American culture.

 

What is gay culture - here, or anywhere else? Even more elusive is this concept of a so-called gay community. I'll fly tomorrow to this magical place where the gay community is alive and evident. Gay Pride parades with muscle men in chartreuse hot pants? Is that the community?

[Guest Thunderbuns]

>Some gay men will be fortunate enough to find their life's

>love, but many will go through several (hundreds) of

>relationships and never find that special person. Many will

>still be cruising at 40, 50, 60, and so on.

 

Just because a straight man is married and has kids - and possibly repeats the cycle all over again after a divorce - doesn't mean that he isn't cruising at 40, 50, & 60. The only differance is he is crusing for women.

 

And it's quite possible that these same stright men would go through the same number of partners as gay men, if it were not for the cost of divorce, alimony and child support.

 

Thunderbuns

[foxy]

After reading all these posts I've come to the conclusion that what I thought was a silly and flip question "Bigger Dick or Bigger Brain" was a serious question that deserved serious answers. Where does one's values lie and what does society, gay or straight, reward?

I certainly didn't mean to imply that serious posts were "sad" and that "there was anything wrong with them".

We certainly aren't living in a "golden age". One only has to look around to know that. I think we do need to keep in mind that the end of civilization has been predicted ever since it started (or has it even started?). Things seem to come in waves and there is always yin and yang. Youth has always ignored the "wisdom" of old age and the old has always been jealous of youth. It's human nature and we are flawed. I take comfort in believing we are not the "finshed product". We are just another form of dinosaur that will destroy ourselves. We are doing a very good job of that. So much easier to destroy rather than create. Must be more fun too since so many are doing it. I expect and hope something better will come along after we've wiped ourselves out. I just don't think we are as important as we think we are. If we were, wouldn't we be a more successful species? Is this sad and depressing? I just try to extract what joy I can from life and try not to contribute to it's woes. Surround yourself with good and decent friends. What more can one do? Well, try to make something beautiful if you have the talent. If not, admire and support those that do. So...bigger dick or bigger brain...what's your choice. I think I'd like a bigger dick.

[Bilbo]

Another hopeful point on the integration front: There is a very warm relationship between GCAM (our local Houston glbt museum and archives) and HATCH (Houston Area Coalition of Teen Homosexuals - OK I must have gotten the name a bit wrong, it doesn't match the acronym). And although this was basically started by the museum, the teens (partly because there are more of them) seem to be even more gung ho about it than the people who run the museum.

[Bilbo]

Since it has been scientifically postulated, and, I think, proved, that we only use 10 - 20% of our brains, and by watching while I fuck I can tell that I use all of my dick and could use more, I would have to say that I would rather have more dick, too.

 

As far as the man, somewhere up above and I should have answered him when I knew where his comment was, who said that this site is a cultural wasteland - Well, what percentage of a cultural land needs to be productive before it is no longer a waste? Whenever we have a thread talking about books or movies, you will find very many interesting and deep ones talked about. (Not very many fluffy fun-nuts at all on those threads. For some reason, reality TV type things get their own individual threads.) When we discuss music, though we have talked about classical, it all tends to be modern rock - whatever you call it. However, I am sure that those knowledgeable in it would tell me that we only tend to talk about the really best stuff there, too. Theater wise, we have discussed Broadway musicals. (More dissing going on there than I would like, but ...) And there has even been one member (ME!) who has offered to make anyone in the Houston area with the interest and the time to go into fundraising a member of the Board of Directors of a children's theater of some standing. (About to enter our 11th season.) (BTW, that offer still stands.) So I am sure that the person who considered this site a waste land was talking in the heat of the moment, and mainly to make a point, eh?

[chrismac]

>Just because a straight man is married and has kids - and

>possibly repeats the cycle all over again after a divorce -

>doesn't mean that he isn't cruising at 40, 50, & 60. The

>only differance is he is crusing for women.

>

>And it's quite possible that these same stright men would go

>through the same number of partners as gay men, if it were

>not for the cost of divorce, alimony and child support.

 

Those are both good points and no doubt true in many cases. I would postulate, however, that a greater percentage of straight men beyond 30 are married with families, and thus "freed" up from the "chase" - as it were - to pursue more cultural activities (spectator sports, family travel - what passes for mainline culture in our society) than gay men their same age.

 

I have no scientific study to back this up - but I'm guessing, from what I've seen in both the straight and gay lifestyles, that this is true.