Tretter Day: Music

I did a bit of research with Jean Tretter today on all the materials he has related to music and gay men. It's pretty interesting the way Western classical music and gay men go together like vanilla ice cream and warm baked apples. At the top of most people's list is the Russian composer Pyotr Illytch Tchaikovsky, whose homosexual desires were just one of many ways he found himself in conflict with modern society.

I haven't seen this yet, and our archive doesn't own a copy. Anybody want to donate one?

Next week I'll talk more about all the stuff Jean helped me pull out: gay black jazz singers, a gay classical music radio show, Billy Budd, and an all-gay male production of a Mozart opera.

Black Dossier: I heart Reading

Moore, Alan and Kevin O'Neill and others. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier. La Jolla, CA: America's Best Comics, 2008.

Overall, Black Dossier was a disappointment. I like the idea of a syncretic history of the world through fantastic stories and myths, but unfortunately none of the characters are particularly interesting. Lacking a Batman or other properly mysterious and angsty hero or villain, Black Dossier builds a nice house but doesn't rent it out to anyone.

That said, I did sort of enjoy trying to identify all of the references. In this panel, for example, we have a major figure in ancient Chinese mythology having some fantastic same-sex lovin' with Orlando, a popular figure among historically-minded Western gender-wonks.

So that panel's fun. And I must admit, I don't know if Alan Moore combined the Queen Mother myth with the later trope of the sexual-vampire-witch, or if there is some story about that in the tradition that he read somewhere. Either way, he is definitely a genuine lover of art and literature, and if that comes across to readers, he's still earning his keep.

David Valentine Imagines 'Transgender'

Valentine, David. Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.

Said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
And the coloured girls go
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo...


I haven't read David's book yet, but I did go to two talks about it, which is probably close to just as good. Here's a tip to remember: if you get a chance to see an academic make a presentation more than once on the same topic, take the chance. I followed the argument much more clearly on the second go-round than on the first. Basically, "transgender" is a term that can and should be contested. Holly, Candy, Little Joe and Sugar Plum Fairy all continue to go to New York poor, young and queer, but they do not use the term "transgender." Meanwhile, all institutions within the community have reified the term "transgender" as the main word for what Sugar Plum Fairy is. A rather classic problem of ontology begins to involve poor Sugar Plum's life when the ontological difference between "trans" and "glb" identities helps Rep. Barney Frank and others to drop them from the Employment Non-discrimination Act (ENDA). The "T" never quite makes it to the table, especially in certain political contexts. This may just say something quite dark about multiple communities' way of thinking about difference.

Tretter Day: Anita Bryant

Tretter Day

I worked up some text that briefly sums up Anita Bryant's "Save Our Children" campaign here in St. Paul, Minnesota back in 1977. I was particularly struck by this photo of one the local opponents to gay rights. I love how his whole pose and body language says "preacher." Or perhaps, not just preacher but "one crazy-ass holy-roller mofo" would be more accurate. Notice, too, the bowl of oranges -- a nice touch of support for the great Anita, spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission.

Strangely, local gay rights advocates trying to fight this demon were not amenable to Floridian activist Bob Kunst and his supporters in Minneapolis, because St. Paul gays felt it was not a national issue. I don't think they looked closely enough at those oranges!

Hello World

Hello World,

I'm a graduate student at the University of Minnesota who volunteers some time each week at The Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies. Since I really like blogs and blogging, especially on gay stuff, I'm going to try blogging about some of the cool things I'm reading and experiencing. I'm thinking I'll probably say something about:

• my research at the Tretter Collection
• my readings on sex in general. Mostly gay-guy oriented, though I do push myself to read and watch all kinds of stuff.