Gay Macho


Book Description

A sociological study of the emergence of the gay male culture from the explosion of gay liberation in the early 1970s through the beginning of the AIDS crisis of the mid-1980s. The first half of the book is the dissertation of Levine, who based it primarily on field work conducted in Greenwich Village's growing gay community in the late 1970s. He looks at the sociology of gay masculinity, hypermasculine sexuality and gender confirmation, and the birth of the "gay clone." The second half of the work is made up of essays which chronicle the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, examine the myth of sexual compulsivity, and look at the implications of constructionist theory for social research on the AIDS epidemic. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Gay Macho


Book Description

Gay Macho presents the ethnography of this homosexual clone. Martin P. Levine, a pioneer of the sociological study of homosexuality, was among the first social scientists to map the emergence of a gay community and this new style of gay masculinity. Levine was a participant in as well as an observer of gay culture in the 1970s, and this perspective allowed him to capture the true flavor of what it was like to be a gay man before AIDS.




From Macho to Mariposa


Book Description

Prepare yourself to dance in a disco in Silver Lake, check out papis in Orchard Beach, cross the border from Guatemala to Mexico on your way to the U.S., see a puro macho bathe in a river in Puerto Rico, make love under a full moon in the Dominican Republic, sigh at a tender moment in an orange grove in Lindsay, visit a panaderia in Kansas, see a full blown birthday party in Juarez, and be seduced by a young artist in the South Bronx. These are some of the stories in this collection of thirty gay Latino writers from around the United States. There are "don't mess with me" divas, alluring bad boys, and sexy teenagers, but also empowered youth for whom being queer is not a question and a family that grows wings on their heads. The infectious rhythms of House music in New York City are adjacent to cumbia in Mexico, next to reggaeton in Puerto Rico, alongside Latin pop in L.A. and merengue in an east coast city. But the spectrum of experiences and emotions that inhabit our days gives these stories dimension and gay/queer Latinos a common ground. The stories are vibrantly varied and clearly connected in this "era of lost signals" in which we live.




Gay Masculinities


Book Description

Leading scholars examine the way in which gay men develop a sense of masculine identity, with special emphasis on the everyday lives of gay men.




Gay Fandom and Crossover Stardom


Book Description

DIVA case study of James Dean, mel Gibson, and Keanu Reeves and how they maintain their appeal to both gay and straight audiences./div




Macho Sluts


Book Description

When it was first published in 1988, Pat Califia's Macho Sluts, a collection of S/M stories set in San Francisco's dyke bathhouses, sex parties, and S/M gay bars, shocked the lesbian community and caused an upheaval in the field of queer publishin...




How To Be Gay


Book Description

No one raises an eyebrow if you suggest that a guy who arranges his furniture just so, rolls his eyes in exaggerated disbelief, likes techno music or show tunes, and knows all of Bette Davis's best lines by heart might, just possibly, be gay. But if you assert that male homosexuality is a cultural practice, expressive of a unique subjectivity and a distinctive relation to mainstream society, people will immediately protest. Such an idea, they will say, is just a stereotype-ridiculously simplistic, politically irresponsible, and morally suspect. The world acknowledges gay male culture as a fact but denies it as a truth. David Halperin, a pioneer of LGBTQ studies, dares to suggest that gayness is a specific way of being that gay men must learn from one another in order to become who they are. Inspired by the notorious undergraduate course of the same title that Halperin taught at the University of Michigan, provoking cries of outrage from both the right-wing media and the gay press, How To Be Gay traces gay men's cultural difference to the social meaning of style. Far from being deterred by stereotypes, Halperin concludes that the genius of gay culture resides in some of its most despised features: its aestheticism, snobbery, melodrama, adoration of glamour, caricatures of women, and obsession with mothers. The insights, impertinence, and unfazed critical intelligence displayed by gay culture, Halperin argues, have much to offer the heterosexual mainstream.




Mucho Macho


Book Description

Quality research—uniquely enhanced by the author’s personal experience! In one of the first books to examine machismo from the perspective of Latin American and Latino men, Chris Girman relies on a compelling combination of ethnographic research and personal experience to explain how macho men—men like the author himself—regulate and sustain same-sex erotic encounters. Girman incorporates his own sexual experiences with a variety of Latin men into the book, infusing his writing with the unique perspective and vivid description that can only be related by someone who has lived the research he writes about. While most of the literature on Latin American male same-sex desire ignores the significance of the male body in its investigation, this book shows why it is essential to focus on the macho male body and re-evaluates so-called “machismo” to forge a more nuanced description of Latin American masculinity. Girman incorporates his own sexual experiences with a variety of Latin American men into the book, infusing his writing with the unique perspective and vivid descriptions that can only be related by someone who has lived the research he writes about. With this book, you’ll become familiar with various kinds of Latin-American homosexual behavior. Here’s a glimpse at what you’ll find inside: “Machismo, Practice Theorists, and Macho Performance” summarizes previous research on Latin American male [homo]sexuality and defines the author’s concept of machismo and Latin American masculinity. “Head, Hands, Balls, and Ass” shows why focusing on the body as living matter, rather than metaphor (as is done in so many other books on sexuality), is the ideal point of entry into the study of Latin American male [homo]sexuality and masculinity. This chapter focuses on specific regions of the macho body—head, hands, balls, and ass—to explain how machismo actually promotes, rather than denies, sexual encounters between men. It also shows the importance of the Latin American family as a variable that structures the manner and frequency in which [homo]sexual encounters occur. “The Dominican Tíguere and Hegemonic Masculinities” takes a specific look at a very peculiar form of hegemonic masculinity—relying on cunning more than strength to “come out on top”—that is indigenous to the Dominican Republic. This chapter also tells the stories of five of the author’s sexual encounters in that nation and discusses the tiguere style of masculine performance. “Desire in a Costa Rican Prison” analyzes the ways in which desire, power, and pleasure are constituted in the Latin American prison environment. “Historical Representations of Same-Sex Desire” examines two short stories—El Matadero (Esteban Echeverria) and Comienza el Desfile (Reinaldo Arenas), which highlight male eroticism as important concepts within discourses on national identity. Both stories conceptualize same-sex desire within specific historical moments and demonstrate how male [homo]sexuality emerges and represents itself not in contrast to the dominant discourse, but within that discourse itself. “Familiar, Familial Voices: Latino Men Speak Out” documents the voices of “gay-identified” Latino men living in Central Texas—men who have come to love other Latin, Black, and Anglo men in the context of very full lives. These men reveal their conceptions of identity, race, performance, resistance, family, pleasure, desire, masculinity, silence, and place. “Performing Matter[s]-Masculinity, the Male Body, and the Evocation of the [non]real” defies the notion that written representations can capture the lived realities of




Macho Love


Book Description

Macho Love: Sex Behind Bars in Central America is the first in-depth study of sexual culture and AIDS in Latin prisons. Psychologists, social workers, criminologists, and AIDS specialists will discover how the interplay of sexual ideals, prostitution, manipulation, resistance, and power relationships among prisoners and some staff are based on money, sex, drugs, and violence. Macho Love gives you a stirring and emotional look at the various risks and dangers lurking in the Latin American prison culture and discusses how Costa Rican and Central American prisons are improving the situation with new intervention programs. Fascinating and informative, Macho Love explores the dangerous Latin prison culture as it discusses: new HIV/AIDS prevention programs implemented in some Costa Rican and Central American prisons the frequency and types of prostitution and rape in prison drug and alcohol addiction and their effects on the spread of HIV/AIDS an understanding of why rehabilitation programs fail or succeed the lack of opportunities to work or to study that leaves the inmates vulnerable to the only freedom they have left--sex why a “cachero,” or a man who penetrates another man, is not considered a homosexual and often refuses to wear a condom, which tremendously increases the risk of HIV/AIDS Macho Love explores the life-threatening sexual culture in prisons to bring you the realities of the Latin prison culture. This revealing book examines the different types of relationships which occur in prisons and the factors that place inmates at risk for contracting the HIV virus, such as not wearing a condom because of intoxication due to drugs and alcohol. Macho Love also shows you how the new HIV/AIDS intervention programs in Costa Rica are combatting these serious problems to lower HIV infection rates and avoid the spread of this deadly and dangerous disease.




Homosexuality in Cold War America


Book Description

Challenging widely held assumptions about postwar gay male culture and politics, Homosexuality in Cold War America examines how gay men in the 1950s resisted pressures to remain in the closet. Robert J. Corber argues that a form of gay male identity emerged in the 1950s that simultaneously drew on and transcended left-wing opposition to the Cold War cultural and political consensus. Combining readings of novels, plays, and films of the period with historical research into the national security state, the growth of the suburbs, and postwar consumer culture, Corber examines how gay men resisted the "organization man" model of masculinity that rose to dominance in the wake of World War II. By exploring the representation of gay men in film noir, Corber suggests that even as this Hollywood genre reinforced homophobic stereotypes, it legitimized the gay male "gaze." He emphasizes how film noir’s introduction of homosexual characters countered the national "project" to render gay men invisible, and marked a deep subversion of the Cold War mentality. Corber then considers the work of gay male writers Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, and James Baldwin, demonstrating how these authors declined to represent homosexuality as a discrete subculture and instead promoted a model of political solidarity rooted in the shared experience of oppression. Homosexuality in Cold War America reveals that the ideological critique of the dominant culture made by gay male authors of the 1950s laid the foundation for the gay liberation movement of the following decade.