Gay Paris

Readings to focus on for the Final Exam

2008-12-10T01:27:00.001-08:00

Spargo, Foucault and Queer Theory pp. 3-69

Le Bitoux, “The Construction of a Political and Media Presence: The Homosexual Liberation Groups in France Between 1975 and 1978” pp. 249-260

Gunther, “France: The Indifferent Ghetto” pp. 34-36

Provencher, Queer French
Ch. 2, pp. 53-78

Provencher, Queer French
Ch. 3, pp. 85-116

Provencher, Queer French
Coming Out in the French (Republican) Family
Ch. 4, pp. 117-148

Provencher, Queer French
Ch. 5, pp. 175-189

Martel, chap. 10, 11
“The Conflagration”
“AIDS: The History of a Social Movement

Martel, chap. 14
“ACT UP: The History of a Political Movement”
“The Second Homosexual Revolution”

FHAR

2008-12-08T01:16:00.000-08:00

Prop 8- The Musical

2008-12-03T12:49:00.000-08:00

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

AIDS March

2008-12-02T13:43:00.000-08:00

See the set on Flickr

World AIDS Day March: Through our eyes

2008-12-02T05:28:00.000-08:00

Microchip for AIDS patients?

2008-12-01T04:40:00.000-08:00

I found an article about a proposed plan to implant Indonisian AIDS patients with microchips as a supposed method of curbing the spread of the disease.

Under the bylaw, which has caused uproar among human rights activists, patients who had shown "actively sexual behavior" could be implanted with a microchip to monitor their activity, lawmaker John Manangsang said...

If a patient with HIV/AIDS was found to have infected a healthy person, there would be a penalty, he said without elaborating

Samhita, a blogger at Feministing, analyzed the proposal in a great way:

What I don't see is how is this preventative (the only-ONLY-effective solution to stop the spread of HIV), if the purpose is merely to punish people after they have infected someone. Are they planning on monitoring these people at all times? That is enough resources surely to put into safe sex education, creating a healthier culture around sex, while having all types of support programs for "high-risk" populations.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

2008-12-01T01:05:00.000-08:00

June 13, 2004 Sunday
Late Edition - Final

With Gay Marriage, La Belle France Turns Conservative

BYLINE: By CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL.
Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and a columnist for The Financial Times.

SECTION: Section 4; Column 1; Week in Review; The World: A Sexual Divide; Pg. 14

ON June 5, Stephane Chapin and his longtime boyfriend, Bertrand Charpentier, emerged from the city hall of Begles, in southwestern France, with tears in their eyes and wedding bands on their fingers. They were the first gays to live out this scene in France.

The televised ceremony, complete with demonstrators pro- and anti-, had a familiar look to Americans who since last winter have watched similar ones in San Francisco and New Paltz, N.Y. Like the mayors of those American cities, the mayor of Begles, Noel Mamere, who was also the Green Party's candidate for president in 2002, had held the wed-ding in violation of the law. Like his American counterparts, Mr. Mamere was accused of having staged a publicity stunt. Newspapers revealed that the couple didn't even live in Begles, and had sold their story for 5,000 euros to the weekly magazine VSD.

But the spectacle quickly ceased to follow the American script, for it appeared that Mr. Mamere could be in real trouble. Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin, a member of President Jacques Chirac's conservative party, announced he would pursue sanctions against the mayor. Dominique Perben, the justice minister, declared the marriage null and void, and Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said it ''would be weak not to act'' in the face of such ''illegal comportment.''

Gay marriage may be sweeping the Western world, but in France it has brought out a conservative impulse that will surprise those used to thinking of France as a progressive counterweight to a reactionary America. While there are exceptions to this script -- unlike President Bush, who promised to back a constitutional amendment to oppose gay marriage, Mr. Chirac has remained silent on the issue -- France has had difficulty digesting gay marriage.

This is partly because of France's republican tradition, which is absolutist on the question of equality before the law and insists that every citizen of France be treated exactly the same. Republicanism a la francaise forecloses any wide use of affirmative action in schools, just as it forecloses any special autonomy for provinces like Corsica, which has a troublesome independence movement. It is unthinkable that Mr. Mamere should confer rights in Begles that cannot be conferred in Paris (where the openly gay mayor, Bertrand Delano, has shown no zeal for same-sex marriage).

But many distrust this appeal to neutral principles. ''You'll find all kinds of people who invoke the traditions of the Republic,'' says Eric Fassin, a professor of sociology at the Ecole Normale Superieure, who has argued in public debates in favor of gay marriage. ''But often it's not an explanation -- it's a justification.''

Mr. Fassin said the gay marriage debate in France has been marked by a ''conservatism of the left'' that uses the left's rhetoric to traditionalist ends. The 1999 Civil Solidarity Pact, for example, resembles Vermont's civil-union law, permitting shared health benefits and simplifying inheritances. But rights of adoption -- a bureaucratic ordeal in France, even for heterosexuals -- were not granted to gays.

That has left France in a very different position from the United States. In retrospect, Americans effectively committed themselves to gay marriage when all states except Florida permitted gay adoption. Once children enter the equation, the state must protect them as best they can, and allowing their guardians to marry takes on a logic previously absent.

France still has its options open. Even with 43 percent of children born out of wedlock, according to the demo-graphic agency Ined, the link remains strong between marriage and a traditional idea of childbearing. Surrogate mothers, for instance, are almost unheard of in France. Medically assisted procreation is not a cultural norm. Nor is late-term abortion: In 2000, feminists won an arduous legislative struggle to raise the cutoff point for abortions from 10 to 12 weeks. (In the United States, by contrast, only the ban on what critics call partial-birth abortion, which is now blocked, restricts a woman's right to an abortion at any time in her pregnancy.) Sexual harassment is another area where the French believe American laws go too far.

The French political class, it often seems, likes to argue for the most conservative possible policies using the most liberal possible rhetoric and examples. Thus the novelist Benoit Duteurtre, writing in the left-leaning daily Liberation, objected to the Begles wedding on the grounds that it was disappointingly petit-bourgeois of gays to want marriage in the first place. And in the current controversy, many of the politicians working most arduously to block gay marriage are shoring up their progressive bona fides by sponsoring legislation to outlaw public expressions of homophobia.

Last winter's legislation banning the Islamic head scarf in schools was passed not on nationalist or religious grounds, but on feminist ones. While many women choose the veil freely, the argument went, those intimidated into wearing it by the men in their household or neighborhood must find a sanctuary in state institutions from such bullying.

One of the strangest outcomes of gay marriage in Begles is the way opinion in the Socialist Party -- the natural home of change when it comes to sex issues -- has split along gender lines. Mr. Mamere's initiative was backed almost unanimously by Socialist men, figures as diverse as the flamboyant former culture and education minister Jack Lang, the conservative former finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the present head of the party, Francois Hollande. The only prominent Socialist male who has opposed Mr. Mamere is former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, the father of the Civil Solidarity Pact, who holds that marriage is ''the union of a man and a woman [that] reflects the duality of the sexes that characterizes our existence.'' It is Socialist women -- the regional leader Segolene Royal, former Justice Min-ister Elisabeth Guigou, and former Labor Minister Martine Aubry -- who led the opposition.

They may have been following the ''differentialism'' (an important strain of French feminism) associated with the philosopher Sylviane Agacinski, who happens to be Mr. Jospin's wife. Ms. Agacinski has argued that the human condition cannot be understood in any universal way without reference to both sexes . This argument has been a mighty tool for left-wing reforms. It provided the intellectual underpinnings for mandating sexual parity in French legislative elections. Today, it provides the intellectual underpinnings for arguing that a marriage that lacks either a man or a woman is no marriage at all.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com

LOAD-DATE: June 15, 2004

THE NEW YORK TIMES

2008-12-01T01:03:00.000-08:00

June 6, 2004 Sunday
Late Edition - Final

French Mayor, Defying Law, Performs Gay Marriage

BYLINE: By ELAINE SCIOLINO

SECTION: Section 1; Column 6; Foreign Desk; Pg. 20

DATELINE: PARIS, June 5

France witnessed its first gay wedding on Saturday, despite warnings from the central government that the ceremony was illegal and the mayor who officiated could be punished.

Noel Mamere, a leader of the Green Party and mayor of the southwest town of Begles, presided at the town hall over the wedding of two men, Bertrand Charpentier, a 31-year-old shopworker, and Stephane Chapin, a 34-year-old nurse.

''I'm proud of this wedding,'' Mr. Mamere told the couple, adding, ''I don't consider myself an outlaw.''

In proceeding with the ceremony, Mr. Mamere ignored pressure from President Jacques Chirac's center-right government to cancel it.

Mr. Mamere could be suspended as mayor and fined as much as $1,800, but any punishment would have little political effect. Mr. Mamere, a savvy, outspoken journalist-turned-politician, could still remain a member of Parliament.

An hour after the ceremony, Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin announced that the French government had initiated a ''sanctions procedure'' against Mr. Mamere. ''I intend to make sure the law of the republic and the authority of the state are respected,'' Mr. de Villepin said.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin warned: ''If such a ceremony takes place, it cannot be called a marriage. It would be an illegal ceremony, null and void under the law.'' He said that any elected official who did such a thing would ''be exposed to the sanctions provided for by law.'' Justice Minister Dominique Perben has also expressed his opposition, as has the Archbishop Jean-Pierre Ricard of Bordeaux, who is also president of the Conference of Bishops of France.

The Catholic Church opposes gay weddings ''because marriage also ensures the renewal of generations, the clarity of filial and parental ties and provides security to the adults and the children who are the fruit of that union, which is not the case of unions between people of the same sex,'' Archbishop Ricard wrote in a recent newspaper commentary.

He has called France a ''hypocritical country'' when it comes to marriage. He has argued that the relevant law -- ar-ticle 75 of the country's Civil Code, which dates back to Napoleon -- is vague and does not require that marriage bind a man and a woman. The article states that a couple entering marriage ''will receive a declaration from each party that they want to take each other for husband and wife.''

The government, however, wants to restrict gay partnerships to a civil contract known as the Civil Solidarity Pact, a legal mechanism introduced in 1999 that gives all adult couples -- regardless of their sex or sexual orientation -- many of the same financial and social rights as those who are formally wedded.

The matter has created fissures in the Socialist Party, which championed the Civil Solidarity Pact in the first place. While some Socialists, including the former prime minister and Socialist leader Lionel Jospin, oppose it, Francois Hollande, the current leader of the Socialist Party, has suggested that it might be advisable eventually to legalize gay marriage.

Mr. Charpentier and Mr. Chapin, both dressed in suits, were applauded by dozens of gay rights supporters as they arrived in a Rolls-Royce at the town hall in Begles, a suburb of Bordeaux. The police stopped some opponents from entering town hall.

A handful of mayors of other small French towns have said they will follow Mr. Mamere's lead and preside at gay marriages.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com

LOAD-DATE: June 6, 2004

World AIDS Day March _ ACT UP Paris

2008-12-01T00:45:00.001-08:00

ACT UP Paris' march for World AIDS Day is this evening. We will meet at 6:15pm sharp on the steps of Opera Bastille. If you are late, it will be difficult to find the group in the crowd, so be on time or a bit early.

THE NEW YORKER

2008-11-30T14:22:00.000-08:00

COMMENT
EIGHT IS ENOUGH
by Hendrik Hertzberg
DECEMBER 1, 2008

Changes California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry. Provides that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.
—Ballot summary, Proposition 8.

You might think that an organization that for most of the first of its not yet two centuries of existence was the world’s most notorious proponent of startlingly unconventional forms of wedded bliss would be a little reticent about issuing orders to the rest of humanity specifying exactly who should be legally entitled to marry whom. But no. The Mormon Church—as anyone can attest who has ever answered the doorbell to find a pair of polite, persistent, adolescent “elders” standing on the stoop, tracts in hand—does not count reticence among the cardinal virtues. Nor does its own history of matrimonial excess bring a blush to its cheek. The original Latter-day Saint, Joseph Smith, acquired at least twenty-eight and perhaps sixty wives, some of them in their early teens, before he was lynched, in 1844, at age thirty-eight. Brigham Young, Smith’s immediate successor, was a bridegroom twenty times over, and his successors, along with much of the male Mormon élite, kept up the mass marrying until the nineteen-thirties—decades after the Church had officially disavowed polygamy, the price of Utah’s admission to the Union, in 1896. As Richard and Joan Ostling write in “Mormon America: The Power and the Promise” (2007), “Smith and his successors in Utah managed American history’s only wide-scale experiment in multiple wives, boldly challenging the nation’s entrenched family structure and the morality of Western Judeo-Christian culture.”

“MORMONS TIPPED SCALE IN BAN ON GAY MARRIAGE,” the Times headlined the week after Election Day, reflecting the views of proponents and opponents alike. Six and a half million Californians voted for Proposition 8, and six million voted against it—a four-point margin, close enough for a single factor to make the difference. Almost all the early canvassers for the cause were Mormons, but the most important contributions were financial. The normal political pattern is for money to get raised in California and spent elsewhere. This time, Salt Lake City played the role of Hollywood, rural Utah was the new Silicon Valley, and California was cast as flyover country. Of the forty million dollars spent on behalf of Prop. 8, some twenty million came from members or organs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Some conservative commentators, who didn’t have much else to gloat about, dwelt lingeringly on what they evidently regarded as the upside of the huge, Obama-sparked African-American turnout. “It was the black vote that voted down gay marriage,” Bill O’Reilly, of Fox News, insisted triumphantly—and, it turns out, wrongly. If exit polling is to be believed, seventy per cent of California’s African-American voters did indeed vote yes on Prop. 8, as did upward of eighty per cent of Republicans, conservatives, white evangelicals, and weekly churchgoers. But the initiative would have passed, barely, even if not a single African-American had shown up at the polls.

Still, this was a fight that should have been won, and after the initial shock—which tempted a few gay and lesbian voices to blame blacks for what O’Reilly credited them with—California’s gay activists and their straight allies, judging from their online postmortems, have begun to direct more criticism at themselves than at their opponents. They were complacent: early polls had shown Prop. 8 losing by double digits. Their television ads were timid and ineffective, focussing on worthy abstractions like equality and fairness, while the other side’s were powerfully emotional. (Also dishonest—they implied that gay marriage would threaten churches’ tax exemptions, force church-affiliated adoption agencies to place children with gay couples, and oblige children to attend gay weddings—but that sort of thing was to be expected.) Barack Obama, like Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, had come out against Prop. 8, yet the No-on-8 forces let Obama’s popularity be used against them: a mass mailing suggesting that the Democratic nominee was for it went essentially unanswered.

The defenders of equal access to marriage, in other words, think their problem was tactical—“messaging,” not substance. They are probably right. In the days after the election, tens of thousands of people, gay and straight, took to the streets of cities and towns throughout the country in spontaneously organized protest. But the mood at these gatherings, by all accounts, was seldom angry; it was cheerful, determined, and hopeful. From 1998 to 2006, bans on same-sex marriage were put on the ballot in one state or another thirty times, and twenty-nine times the people voted for them. This year, in addition to California, Florida passed a ban; Arizona, which in 2006 had been the one exception, reversed itself and did the same; more cruelly, Arkansas approved a ballot measure depriving gay men and lesbians of the right to adopt children. But all this has about it the feel of a last stand.

Four years ago, Howard Dean’s Presidential campaign worried that its undoing would be the fact that as governor of Vermont Dean had signed a bill allowing gays and lesbians to form civil unions; that turned out to be the least of his troubles. Now large majorities of Americans favor laws under which same-sex couples have all or most of the same rights as couples of opposite sexes, and five states, including California, have enacted them. Gay marriage itself is legal, and not terribly controversial, in Massachusetts and Connecticut. In 1993, most Americans thought that open homosexuals shouldn’t be permitted to serve in the military; now three-quarters think that they should. And the polls show that the younger you are the more likely you are to favor equal treatment of gays and straights in every area of public and private life. The Field Poll, one of California’s most respected, found last month that while the state’s over-sixty-fives oppose gay marriage by a thirty-point margin, the under-thirty-fives favor it by thirteen points—and it’s hard to think of a reason that getting older should change their minds.

Like a polluted swamp, anti-gay bigotry is likely to get thicker and more toxic as it dries up. Viciousness meets viscousness. “Look,” Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, said the other day (on the air, to Bill O’Reilly), “I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence. . . . I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion. And I think if you believe in historic Christianity, you have to confront the fact.” For diversity’s sake, he added that “the historic version of Islam” and “the historic version of Judaism” are likewise menaced—which is natural, given that gay, secular, fascist values are “the opposite of what you’re taught in Sunday school.”

This sort of sludge may or may not prove to be of some slight utility in the 2012 Republican primaries, but it is, increasingly, history. A couple of days before the California vote, the San Francisco Chronicle’s John Wildermuth noticed a “No on Prop 8” sign on a front lawn. The lawn and the sign belonged to Steve Young, the football Hall of Famer and former 49er quarterback, and his wife, Barb. Steve Young is a graduate of Brigham Young University, which is named for his great-great-great-grandfather. The Youngs still belong to the Mormon Church. “We believe all families matter and we do not believe in discrimination,” Barb Young said. “Therefore, our family will vote against Prop 8.” It wasn’t enough this time. But the time is coming. ♦

The Faces of AIDS and HIV

2008-11-30T03:47:00.000-08:00

In honor of World AIDS Day, The New York Times had created an interactive article titled, "Patient Voices: AIDS and HIV". Eight amazing men and women discuss their personal thoughts, strengths, weakness, and experiences. AIDS doesn't discriminate, the world shouldn't either.

The Perspective from The National Review

2008-11-26T05:42:00.000-08:00

THE NATIONAL REVIEW

November 24, 2008, 8:00 a.m.

Legislating Immorality
By the Editors

Last week in a Denver suburb, someone lit a Book of Mormon on fire and dropped it on the doorstep of a Mormon temple, presumably as a statement about the church’s support of Proposition 8 in California, an initiative that amended the state constitution to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. In a move that may make gay-rights supporters’ heads spin, the incident is being investigated as a hate crime.

The outbreak of attacks on the Mormon church since the passage of Proposition 8 has been chilling: envelopes full of suspicious white powder were sent to church headquarters in Salt Lake City; protesters showed up en masse to intimidate Mormon small-business owners who supported the measure; a website was created to identify and shame members of the church who backed it; activists are targeting the relatives of prominent Mormons who gave money to pass it, as well as other Mormons who are only tangentially associated with the cause; some have even called for a boycott of the entire state of Utah.

The wisdom of hate-crimes legislation aside, there is no doubt that a lot of hate is being directed at Mormons as a group. But why single out Mormons? And why now?

Dozens of church bodies — including the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Christian bishops of California, and a wide variety of evangelicals — supported the proposition. It’s also worth considering that, while gay-rights advocates cannot discuss same-sex marriage for more than 30 seconds without making faulty analogies to Jim Crow-era anti-miscegenation laws, some 70 percent of blacks voted for Proposition 8. While there have been a few ugly racist statements by gay-rights supporters, such vile sentiment has been restricted. Not so the hatred directed at Mormons, who are convenient targets.

To date, 30 states have voted on initiatives addressing same-sex marriage, and in every state traditional marriage has come out on top. But somehow the fact that Mormons got involved during the latest statewide referendum constitutes a bridge too far? In truth, Mormons are a target of convenience in the opening salvo of what is sure to be a full-scale assault on much of America’s religious infrastructure, which gay activists perceive as a barrier to their aspirations. Among religious groups, Mormons are not the biggest obstacle to same-sex marriage — not by a long shot. But they are an easy target. Anti-Mormon bigotry is unfortunately common, and gay-rights activists are cynically exploiting that fact.

There are no websites dedicated to “outing” Catholics who supported Proposition 8, even though Catholic voters heavily outnumber Mormons. And the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is not remarkably strident in its beliefs on the subject. So far, no gay-rights activist has had the brass to burn a Qu’ran on the doorstep of a militant mosque where — forget marriage! — imams advocate the stoning of homosexuals.

Churches oppose same-sex marriage in part because it represents an implicit threat to freedom of conscience and belief. California already had one of the broadest civil-unions laws in the country. There was little in the way of government-sanctioned privileges that a state-issued marriage license would confer. But the drive for same-sex marriage is in practice about legislating moral conformity — demanding that everybody recognize homosexual relationships in the same way, regardless of their own beliefs. Freedom of conscience, or diversity of belief, is the last thing the homosexual lobby will tolerate: In New Mexico, a state civil-rights commission fined an evangelical wedding photographer $6,637 for politely declining to photograph a gay commitment ceremony. In California, the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously against two San Diego fertility doctors who refused to give in-vitro fertilization to a lesbian owing to their religious beliefs, even though they had referred her to another doctor. And just this week, evangelical dating site eHarmony, which hadn’t previously provided same-sex matchmaking services, announced it had been browbeaten into doing so by New Jersey’s Division on Civil Rights and the threat of litigation. The first 10,000 same-sex eHarmony registrants will receive a free six-month subscription. “That’s one of the things I asked for,” crowed Eric McKinley, who brought the charges against eHarmony.

Where do they go from here? Gay activists are already using the legal system to try to revoke the tax-exempt status of the Mormon church. If you believe that churches and synagogues, priests and rabbis won’t eventually be sued for their statements on sexuality, you’re kidding yourself. Chai Feldblum, a Georgetown University law professor and gay activist who helps draft federal legislation related to sexual orientation, says that, when religious liberty conflicts with gay rights, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.” A National Public Radio report on the conflict noted that if previous cases are any guide, “the outlook is grim for religious groups.”

Given their cavalier disregard for the freedom of conscience, it’s little surprise that the gay lobby is equally disdainful of democracy: They began pursuing legal challenges to Proposition 8 practically before they were done tallying the votes. Lamentably, the state attorney general defending the will of the people will be former Jerry Brown, the liberal former governor who was an open opponent of the measure and tried to sabotage it. The legal challenges will be heard by the same state Supreme Court that overturned California’s previous law forbidding gay marriage back in May. There’s a real possibility the will of the people will be spurned a second time, democracy be damned. They’ve already burned the Book of Mormon. The First Amendment is next.

National Review Online

Times Article on Funding for Prop 8

2008-11-26T05:41:00.001-08:00

THE NEW YORK TIMES

November 26, 2008
Inquiry Set on Mormon Aid for California Marriage Vote

By JESSE McKINLEY
SAN FRANCISCO — California officials will investigate accusations that the Mormon Church neglected to report a battery of nonmonetary contributions — including phone banks, a Web site and commercials — on behalf of a ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage.

Roman Porter, the executive director of the Fair Political Practices Commission, which oversees California campaign finance laws, signed off on the investigation after reviewing a sworn complaint filed on Nov. 13.

The complaint, filed by Fred Karger, founder of the group Californians Against Hate, asserted that the church’s reported contributions — about $5,000, according to state election filings — vastly underestimated its actual efforts in passing Proposition 8, which amended the state’s Constitution to recognize only male-female marriage.

Broadly speaking, California state law requires disclosure of any money spent or services provided to influence the outcome of an election.

Mr. Porter said the announcement of the investigation was not “a determination on the validity of the claims or the culpability of the individuals,” but that the claims had been reviewed by a lawyer for the commission and its chief of enforcement and deemed worth pursuing.

Kim Farah, a spokeswoman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, issued a statement Tuesday saying it had received the complaint and would cooperate with the investigation. Frank Schubert, campaign manager for the leading group behind Proposition 8, said the accusations were baseless and made by a “rogue group.”

Responding to a plea from Mormon Church leaders to “become involved in this important cause,” members contributed millions of dollars and volunteered for countless hours on behalf of Proposition 8. The ballot measure passed with 52 percent of the vote, leading to protests and boycotts of supporters of the proposition, including some Mormon temples and businesses.

Mr. Karger’s complaint paints a sweeping picture of the involvement by the church leadership, and raises questions about who paid for out-of-state phone banks and grass-roots rallies in California before the Nov. 4 vote.

“Who paid for the buses, travel costs, meals and other expenses of all the Mormon participants?” the complaint reads. “No contributions were reported.”

The complaint also touches on a five-state simulcast from church leaders to Mormon congregations, as well as a Web site, preservingmarriage.org, that featured a series of videos advocating passage of the ballot measure and is labeled “an official Web site” of the Mormon Church.

Ms. Farah said the church had no comment on the particular accusations in the complaint.

If found in violation of election laws, the church could face fines of up to $5,000 per violation, Mr. Porter said. Bigger fines could also be levied by a civil court.

Mr. Karger said he respected the right of Mormons to vote in line with their religious beliefs, but added “if they’re going to play politics, then they need to play by the rules.”

The California Supreme Court agreed last week to review the constitutionality of the measure, with a ruling expected next year.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Le Centre LGBT Paris

2008-11-25T06:02:00.000-08:00

Everyone is expected to visit the LGBT Centre in Paris this semester. Unfortunately, their opening times do not correspond with our class period, so we will all have to go outside of class time. We can discuss a time that would suit most people and those who cannot come can visit the center separately. There will be a reaction essay on the final exam regarding your visit to the center.

Le Centre LGBT | Paris• Ile-de-France
63, rue Beaubourg / 75003 PARIS
(Literally just around the corner from CEA)

Monday : 18h - 20h
Tuesday : 15h - 20h
Wednesday : 12h30 - 20h
Thursday : 15h - 20h
Friday : 12h30 - 20h
Saturday : 12h30 - 20h
Sunday : 16h - 19h, Café Lunettes Rouges

Upcoming Events:

HARVEY MILK

2008-11-25T02:17:00.000-08:00

My real life boyfriend, James Franco, playing Scott Smith in MILK.

Director Gus Van Sant uses the account of one of the country's first openly gay public officials, who was assassinated in 1978, to invest the gay rights movement with mythic grandeur, as a successor to all the heroic social protest movements in American history. Van Sant's point of view may be a matter of politics, outside the scope of a review, but his success in putting over his point of view is a question of art.

Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk was born and raised in New York where he acknowledged his homosexuality as an adolescent, but chose to pursue sexual relationships with secrecy and discretion well into his adult years. His experience in the counterculture of the 1960s caused him to shed many of his conservative views about individual freedom and the expression of sexuality.

Milk moved to San Francisco in 1972 and opened a camera store. Although he had been restless, holding an assortment of jobs and moving house frequently, he settled in the Castro District, a neighborhood that was experiencing a mass immigration of gay men and lesbians. He was compelled to run for city supervisor in 1973, though he encountered resistance from the existing gay political establishment. His campaign was compared to theater; he was brash, outspoken, animated, and outrageous, earning media attention and votes, although not enough to be elected. He campaigned again in the next two supervisor elections, dubbing himself the "Mayor of Castro Street". Voters responded enough to warrant his running for the California State Assembly as well. Taking advantage of his growing popularity, he led the gay political movement in fierce battles against anti-gay initiatives. Milk was elected city supervisor in 1977 after San Francisco reorganized its election procedures to choose representatives from neighborhoods rather than through city-wide ballots.

Milk served almost eleven months as city supervisor and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance in San Francisco. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor who had recently resigned and wanted his job back. Both Milk's election and the events following his assassination demonstrated the liberalization of the population and political conflicts between the city government and a conservative police force.

Milk has become an icon in San Francisco and "a martyr for gay rights", according to University of San Francisco professor Peter Novak.[1] While established political organizers in the city insisted gays work with liberal politicians and use restraint in reaching their objectives, Milk outspokenly encouraged gays to use their growing power in the city and support each other. His goal was to give hope to disenfranchised gays around the country. In 2002, he was called "the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States".[2] Writer John Cloud remarked on his influence, "After he defied the governing class of San Francisco in 1977 to become a member of its board of supervisors, many people—straight and gay—had to adjust to a new reality he embodied: that a gay person could live an honest life and succeed."[3]

1 Decembre 2008

2008-11-23T15:03:00.000-08:00

Journée mondiale de lutte contre le sida
sida : prévenir, ne pas punir
Manifestation / lundi 1er décembre / 18h30 / Bastille

Il n’y a ni coupable, ni victime lors de la transmission du sida par voie sexuelle. Il y a un virus qu’il faut combattre.

ACT UP PARIS

2008-11-23T13:47:00.000-08:00

excerpts taken from Chapter 14: ACT UP: The History of a Political Movement
The Pink and the Black _Frédéric Martel

ACT UP PARIS Website

Origins:

"ACT UP is a group based on anger." (p. 295)

Larry Kramer: New York | 1981
"Larry Kramer acquired a sulfurous reputation by denouncing, in his prophetic novel, promiscuity, back rooms, and the obsession with sex. Because he criticized what was at teh time the very essence of the homosexual lifestyle, Kramer was viciously taken to talk in 1978 by gay activists, who denounced his persistent guilt, 'gay homophobia,' self-loathing, hidden moralizing, and proselytizing hatred of sex." (p. 285)

"With 20,000 Americans already dead of AIDS, Kramer hoped for a return to radical grassroots militancy. On March 8, 1987, he created the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, known by the acronym ACT UP. The organization adopted the slogan "AIDS is our holocaust;" it chose the pink triangle as its emblem, but, symbolically, inverted it so that the tip pointed upward, like a weapon that has been turned upside down. An openly homosexual organization, ACT UP chose provocation, as indicated in such slogans as 'The government has blood on its hands.' 'ACT UP is a rude, nasty organization, like the virus that is killing us,' wrote Kramer." (p. 287)

"In conjunction with ACT UP, American homosexuals invented the practice of 'outing,' publicly revealing the homosexuality or HIV status of a person reputed to be a 'closet queen' or a conservative." (p. 287)

The French Context:

In an interview, published by The Observer in England (in June 1991), Edith Cresson (the new French Prime Minister under Mitterrand at the time) is quoted as saying:

"In English-speaking countries most men prefer the company of other men, but most of these men are homosexual - maybe not the majority, but in the United States a full 25 percent of them are, and in England and Germany it's nearly the same thing...I don't know whether that's a biological or cultural fact, but I remember noticing in London - and all the girls make the same observation - that men don't look at you in the street...Anglo-Saxons are not interested in women as women...It's a problem of upbringing and I consider that a kind of illness." (p. 288)

In a later interview with ABC, she went on to add:

"A man who is not interested in a woman, that seems bizarre to me...I think [heterosexuality] is better. Homosexuality is different and marginal. It exists more in the Anglo-Saxon tradition than in the Latin tradition. Everyone knows that. It's a fact of civilization." (p. 289)

ACT UP in PARIS:

It was Didier Lestrade who "wondered whether it might be a good time to create an ACT UP organization in Paris. Lestrade was a reporter for Gai Pied Hebdo and Libération...He marveled at American homosexual life, with its chosen ghettos and communitarian political culture, and even more at the strong-arm tactics of ACT UP-New York. 'I went through the 1980s like the queers of that time: going out, having fun, cruising, fucking, not thinking. We had an irrational side when it came to the disease. Until very late, I was looking the other way.' Lestrade was infected with HIV at a late date - in early 1987, when, as a contributer to Gai Pied, he was perfectly well-informed of the risks. He awaited the signal from his friends to launch the ACT UP venture. He was thirty years old." (p. 291)

Early ACT UP-Paris Activities:

"Militants picketed in front of the National Assembly, manipulating powerful images and words. Their signs were translated into French: 'silence=mort' and 'action=vie.' On December 1, 1989, they demonstrated against the church's opposition to condoms, making catcalls and shouting, 'Condoms are life, but the church forbids them!' They hung a banner reading 'OUI A LA CAPOTE' (Yes to condoms) between the towers of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. Later (May, 1990) the prime minister's Service d'Information et de Diffusion was 'zapped' because it has censored the AFLS subway campaign. The city of Paris was hit (June, 1990) for its 'AIDS plan,' which was judged too timid. The Senate was zapped (May, 1991) for trying to make it a crime to transmit the virus and for reinstating homosexuality as a criminal offense." (p. 291)

"ZAPS": (rapid actions against a person, a media outlet, or an organization)

"The organization used slogans that were Manichean ('AIDS: Mitterrand is guilty' 'Got HIV? France prefers you dead'), political ('Infected under Mitterrand, dead under Chirac'), oddly demanding ('Give me T cells, Balladur!') [a reference to Prime Minister Edouard Balladur], provocative and vulgar ('Proud to exist, proud to fist'), and even morbid (at Père-Lachaise Cemetery, militants spray-painted 'Look, the state is investing in your future!' or shouted 'Make way, we're coming!'). The watchwords were often amusing, vaguely Dadaist ('Eat apples to fight AIDS!'), or bordering on self-ridicule ('AIDS is disco'). They could also be sentimental, as in this moving slogan on Gay Pride Day in 1992: I WANT YOU TO LIVE!" (p. 292)

How is this approach effective? Was it needed at the time, given the political context? Still? Why? In what ways could this approach be ineffective?

French Response:

"Beyond the debates and the tone adopted by ACT UP, the former president of the republic's silence on the AIDS issue remains incomprehensible. All in all, the disease, which appeared when he was elected in 1981 and increased tenfold during his two seven-year terms, was never the object of the slightest assessment on his part. Thus Mitterrand failed to address one of the key issues of the century's end, an issue encompassing both exclusion and discrimination." (p. 292)

Did things change immediately, even within the organization?

"There was a real lack of courage on our part. We distributed ACT UP pamphlets at the entrances to gay bars, even though we knew very well that people inside were fucking without condoms. We should have gone in and cleaned out the fucked-up mess inside. For my part, I have always supported a minority position, which was and still is to have the back rooms closed down..." (p. 298)

ACT UP | Aides

"On May 21, 1994, a few hundred militants from ACT UP-Paris lay on the ground on the parvis Beaubourg for the 'day of despair,' among pictures of coffins, slogans about the hecatomb, and, in ACT UP's newspaper, many reproductions of death's heads. A week later, on May 29, Aides organized the 'march for life' from the Palais Omnisports in Bercy to the Eiffel Tower. There were several thousand marchers in a joyful, easygoing, familial atmosphere; in the end, several thousand francs in donations were collected. These two demonstrations in themselves mark the distinction between ACT UP and Aides." (p. 300)

Aides: It's not your fault you are sick
ACT UP: It is other people's fault you are sick

Lestrade: "There is a great deal of violence within ACT UP because of the despair, the anger, and the grief. This despair was put to use, channeled somewhere. Militants were told: 'You're scared, you're angry, you can do something with that anger.' ACT UP is the only organization that channels that anger outward." (p. 302)

"ACT UP also distinguishes itself from Aides in its strong declaration of homosexual identity, transforming a social stigma into a positive identity. Aides may have appeared more 'apologetic' - something for which it has naturally been criticized by ACT UP. In Aides, people are homosexual. In ACT UP, they are queer." (p. 302)

Philippe Mangeot (a student at Ecole Normale and an activist at ACT UP) says:
"ACT UP is a place of circulating desires. I have two fiancés right now: I found both of them at ACT UP. I've sometimes thought the Aides guys were better-looking, though. But the goal of ACT UP is to have the best-looking guys in Paris! ACT UP is a cruising group, but it's also a group where people whose sexuality is not yet defined can come, and where they often have their first homosexual experiences. For example, even the straights in ACT UP are queer! That's a joy to me. There's a process of becoming queer in ACT UP." (p. 304)

The Pink Condom:

"On December 1, 1993, the spectacular action of putting a giant fluorescent pink condom on the obelisk at the Place de la Concorde made all of France smile." (p. 306)

anti-gay blacklist

2008-11-23T06:57:00.000-08:00

a list of people/companies who donated to fund proposition 8:
http://antigayblacklist.com/

... about the last post

2008-11-19T10:20:00.000-08:00

You need to link to the Huffington Post link, to see the O'Reilly video. Sorry it wouldn't let me put it on the page.

Bill O'Reilly's Pseudo-Documentary

2008-11-19T09:58:00.000-08:00

Bill O'Reilly is scared. As a daring crusader on the side of "traditional America" in the war against "secular progressives," O'Reilly fears that the "far left" will push President-elect Obama to embrace their values. As an example of the horrors that would befall us if this were to happen, O'Reilly offers up a surreal pseudo-documentary of San Francisco. O'Reilly sends producer Jesse Waters, whose sole journalistic value seems to be his utter lack of shame at chasing after and ambushing anyone O'Reilly points his finger at, to San Francisco because it represents 'far left government' at work.

Watching this video, one would think that ninety percent of San Francisco's population are either homeless, addicted to drugs, prostitutes, crazy, or some mix of all these. The video is an unbelievable smear on a great American city. The only thing worse than the video's message is the production value. After showing the video, O'Reilly interviews Waters for insight into how San Franciscans can live in such moral and physical squalor. Waters basically says the citizens of Frisco have accepted, and adjusted to, the fact their city is a hell hole. Actually, the city is so beyond the pale that O'Reilly once said he wouldn't mind if Al Qaida attacked the city. Watch and judge for yourself.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/18/bill-oreilly-smears-san-f_n_144734.html

Chapter 4: S'assumer dans la famille: Coming out in the French (Republican) Family

2008-11-18T12:35:00.000-08:00

excerpts from: Queer French: Globalization, Language, and Sexual Citizenship in France
_Denis M. Provencher

filiation: symbolic link between parents and children

"..home is still the site where young people spend lengthy periods of time with a parent or parent and siblings...Even when young people leave home, the family home is still the site through which many of their individual biographies and expectations are routed and consequently where the emotional functioning of the family is often played out." (p. 119)

French conservatives present a universalizing discourse where that which is 'biologically universal' in nature (that is male/female sex roles; opposite-sex pairings) become 'symbolically universal' (that is acceptable gender and parental roles; legitimate parent-child bonds) both in French culture and in a more 'universal culture'. (p. 123)

It is on this basis that gay adoption is met with such resistance in France. "They (those who resist adoption) explain that sexual difference is a fundamental (anthropological) reference that is prepolitical insofar as it structures society: as a consequence, it should not be trifled with politically. Filiation without sexual difference would thus undermine a symbolic order that is they very condition of our ability to think and live in a society." (p. 122)

Moderate politicians in France support homosexuals and their rights claims as long as they continue to occupy a 'subversive position' as exemplified in the PaCS civil union that keeps them outside of the traditional family unit. "Middle-ground reformists prefer 'disorderly conduct' among homosexuals: as long as homosexuality remains subversive, it will not subvert the 'symbolic order' of heterosexuality...toleration for homosexuality should not lead to its inclusion within the family." (p. 123)

Hence, many French gays and lesbians may hold a general discussion about sexuality with their parents, however a discussion of the individual's sexual practices or their particular homosexual identity remains 'indicible' (unspeakable) or even taboo. (p. 125)

Gabriel (29-year-old gay man from a middle-class Parisian family, web designer and aspiring artist) *p. 127

Nadine (39-year-old lesbian who worked as a police officer in Lyon, grew up with an older sister and younger brother in a village of 5,000 inhabitants outside of Lyon, where both parents worked as bakers. On her 36th birthday she told her parents) *p. 133

These are the opening credits for the French reality television program Loft Story (like Big Brother) from 2002. Thomas, one of the characters, was first introduced on the show as a virgin and he developed a reputation as such among his co-lofters. His supposed sexual naivete and shyness prompted co-lofter David to seek additional information - the scene follows where five of the lofters discuss Thomas's same-sex preference during one of their 'natural' daily interactions. *(p. 139)

Chapter 3: French Articulations of the Closet and Coming Out

2008-11-18T12:03:00.000-08:00

excerpts from: Queer French: Globalization, Language, and Sexual Citizenship in France
_Denis M. Provencher

Oscar reacts to the term "coming out":
'Faire le coming-out,' it bothers me this American cliche, you know, these kinds of theatrical things, at the same time, I really do not know the US very well, but I have this impression that it's there where everything is dramatized, right, we have the impression that people are always playing roles. (p. 86)

Jean-Louis:
It's an expression that means...but for me no...it's an expression...it would be easier to say 'declare one's homosexuality,' it's easier. It's a bit idiotic, by the way. No...for me...to be 'out,' it's someone who...a homosexual...who openly accepts homosexuality. (p. 86)

In many coming out narratives, 'protagonists exhibit a period of suffering before coming out...self-acceptance is preceded by a sometimes lengthy internal struggle with their gay feelings. The struggle, or inner conflict, is transformed into words using metaphor, inner speech, expressive phonology, repetition, and detailed imagery...evoking the image of 'the closet' to express these experiences of isolation.' (p. 87)

Some contend that the closet plays a less significant role in late 20th century America and other societies that function around the norm of heterosexuality than it did during earlier decades...They contend that today's American gay and lesbian youth discuss same-sex desire more openly and integrate it more readily into their everyday conversations. (p. 88)

Do you agree? How do you/people you have known talk about this experience? How is it articulated?

For this study, I recruited 40 French gays and lesbians who came from various regional and socio-economic backgrounds and who ranged from 21 to 46 years of age to discuss their coming-out experiences.

French notions of the 'authentic' and 'inauthentic self' and 'bad faith' play evident roles in many articulations. Nadine speaks of an 'inauthentic' individual that stays closed in; Pierre speaks of the shameful, inauthentic self who lives in bad faith; and Gabriel speaks of the hidden or 'unaccepting' self. When prompted, these French gay and lesbian speakers can recognize and make use of the English-based terms 'in' and 'out' that are related to the closet. However, they do not utilize the image of the closet nor do they associate concealment with a specific place. (p. 95)

Jean-Louis's story (p. 96) is strikingly different from the US narratives as this speaker does not consider this moment to be his coming out of 'the closet.' Of course, he clearly associates the statement 'Je suis pédé' with his 'coming out' and he experiences a sense of relief after telling others about his sexual orientation. However, Jean-Louis does not speak about coming out as a period of self-discovery in terms of shame or isolation but in terms of uncovering his 'vraie personnalité' and his need to stop distorting or 'travestir la vérité' ('dressing up the truth'). (p. 97) *read from p. 98

*'Desert of Nothing' (p. 101)

Unlike many of the US-based experiences, Francois's story foregrounds the importance of living a full life and being actively involved in a larger and often non gay-specific social network (friends) throughout the coming-out period. French coming-out narratives involve a feeling of living as a relatively whole person before making any type of declarative statement. Instead of foregrounding themes of the closet, the desert or isolation, speakers like Francois highlight a sense of fulfillment and include desserts and other satisfying experiences. (p. 103)

* Francois again on 104

"An American 'gay' or 'queer' stepped in the sexual identity politics of the United States can be quite perplexed, or even infuriated, by the large number of men cruising in Parisian gay bars who are not gay-identified...Indeed, while in the United States the homosexual/heterosexual binarism has become a primary ontological dichotomy, in France sexual orientation continues to be placed low down on the hierarchy of ontological identifiers, well below nationality, class, gender or profession." (p. 115)

Hate Crime

2008-11-17T15:38:00.000-08:00

No bail for murder suspect; hate crime charge a possibility

Syracuse, New York (WSYR-TV) - A 20-year-old Syracuse man, already charged with second degree murder, could be called upon to answer to a worse crime.

Police say Dwight DeLee shot and killed Moses Cannon, known by friends and family as Latiesha Green. The victim was a transgender person. The reason for the shooting, police say, is because of Cannon's sexuality.

The district attorney's office is now weighing whether or not to charge DeLee with a hate crime, which would carry a loftier sentence.

DeLee was arraigned Monday morning in Syracuse City Court on a charge of second degree Murder. No bail was set and he remains in custody.

A friend told Latiesha and her brother Mark Cannon, 18, to stop by a party at 411 Seymour Street on Friday night. When they pulled up to the police, police say a number of people took issue with their arrival because the brothers because of their sexaulity.

DeLee allegedly walked up to the parked car and began shouting profanities. Police say he then went inside the house and came back out with a 22-caliber rifle.

DeLee fired a single round through the driver’s side window, according to police. The bullet grazed Mark Cannon’s arm and hit Latiesha in the chest.

Mark, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, drove to Arthur Street where an ambulance picked the siblings up and took them to University Hospital. Latiesha was later pronounced dead. Mark was treated and released.

DeLee fled the party after the shooting and police later found him at a home in Liverpool where he was arrested.

Police say DeLee has a history of weapons and drug charges on file.

ME NOT METH

2008-11-17T06:01:00.000-08:00

Anti-meth campaign aimed at gay men:

California is spending $11 million to discourage use of the drug, which increases the risk of spreading HIV. (3.25.08)

California drug officials launched an $11-million barrage of billboards, bus wraps, cable TV ads and a website Thursday aimed at discouraging gay men from using methamphetamine, an illegal stimulant linked to risky sexual behavior and the spread of HIV.The drug, commonly known as "crystal" or "tina," has been a popular party drug in gay circles since the 1990s. A statewide survey, also released Thursday, found that crystal meth use was 11 times more common among gay men than in the California population overall. Fifty-five percent of 549 gay and bisexual men surveyed said they had used the drug, compared with 5% of the general population.

Mike Rizzo, manager of the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center's crystal meth recovery services, praised the state's campaign, especially the website videos of real people relaying the consequences of using crystal meth. Not only will they appeal to young people, he said, but they portrayed meth use in a way that "is real and relatable and not easily dismissed as being overly alarmist."

The site, http://www.menotmeth.org/en/your/stories, allows users to add their own videos. It also provides links to places to get help.

The Gay & Lesbian Center, along with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, helped push the Legislature to pass the California Methamphetamine Initiative in 2006. Data from the center's HIV testing program found that nearly one in every three gay or bisexual men who tested positive in the testing program in 2004 used crystal meth -- a threefold increase over 2001.

In the state-sponsored survey, gay men were the only group to cite enhanced sexual arousal as part of drug's appeal.

"Not only can it increase the likelihood of having unprotected sex, but people are also having more sex with more partners and having sex for a longer period of time, increasing the likelihood of infection," said Dr. Michelle Roland, chief of the AIDS office at the state Department of Public Health.

Women and heterosexual men who use meth are also at risk for sexually transmitted diseases and hepatitis, she said.

For many women, the drug is seen not as a sexual aid but as "Mom's little helper," according to Renee Zito, director of the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs.

"It helps you lose weight," she said. "It gives you energy. If you are a working mother and juggling everything under the sun, it helps you cope -- initially."

Yet methamphetamine is a factor in about 80% of child neglect and endangerment cases. For all users, the powerfully addictive drug "turns on you down the line," said Zito.

Folsom Street Fair- San Francisco, CA

"People get to the point that they need it so desperately that they're willing to do anything to get the drug," she said. Although the campaign is directed toward gay men, it applies to anyone who uses or is tempted to use meth, Zito said. The campaign "is about loss, really -- of family, friends, their looks, jobs, who they are. It essentially gets down to 'I lost myself.'

Montana also has a campagne to stop meth.

Sundance and Prop 8

2008-11-17T04:40:00.000-08:00

Why is the Sundance Film Festival taking place in the Hate State of Utah, by blogger John Aravosis, was the first to call for a boycott of Sundance. His issues are aimed at the Mormon Church in general, and specificall one donor, Brent Andrus, who apparently owns many Marriott hotels in the state.

The general concensus is that a boycott of Sundance is unlikely. If it does happen, the effect will be minimal.

AIDS books for children

2008-11-17T03:20:00.000-08:00

A Name on the Quilt : A Story of Remembrance

Related to the NAMES Project, a non-profit organization in which families and friends commemorate loved ones through panels on a national quilt. Lauren, the main character, helps her family make a panel for her Uncle Ron. Deals with grief, rememberance, and also acceptance (Grandpa chooses not to participate in the quilt making)

Too Far Away To Touch

Deals more with the effects of AIDS than causes, but shows Zoe's Uncle Leonard taking pills, losing his hair, and growing tired. In depth discussions of death and dying.

Be a Friend: Children Who Live With HIV Speak

Exactly what it sounds like. First hand accounts of children living with HIV. Drawings and writings. Discussions of death and also ostracism.

Daddy & Me: A Photo Story of Arthur Ashe and his Daughter Camera

Apparently my favorite book about AIDS from when I was younger is now out of print.
From the Amazon.com/Publisher's Weekly description:

"What you will see here is a portrait of Arthur and Camera as they care for each other on bad days and play together as father and daughter on good days," writes Arthur Ashe's widow, Moutoussamy-Ashe, in her introductory note. Anything but sentimental or maudlin, her photographs effectively and affectingly chronicle daily interactions between Camera and her father after he contracted AIDS. In a straightforward, first-person narrative accompanying the pictures, Camera talks about how she helps her father through his "bad" days, and how he does the same for her. As the book comes to a close, she explains how "Daddy got AIDS from a blood transfusion during a heart operation." Her final words ("And one thing's for sure--I love my daddy and my daddy loves me. That is the best medicine and we both agree!") give no indication that Ashe died. As written, the book allows parents to direct their own discussions about AIDS, and reinforces the impression that Camera's special relationship with her father will live forever in her memory.

Rachel Maddow on Palin

2008-11-14T12:30:00.000-08:00

Rachel Maddow is an openly gay newscaster for MSNBC. She topped Out magazine's Out100 for 2008, and was also the first openly gay American to to win a Rhodes scholarship.

Chapter 11: The History of a Social Movement

2008-11-13T05:53:00.000-08:00

The Pink and the Black: Homosexuals in France Since 1968
_Frederic Martel

In 1984, Foucault died of AIDS at the Hôpital Pitié Salpêtrière in the 13th arrondissement in Paris. Foucault's death can be seen as the founding act in the birth of Aides (the organization). (p. 216)

What organization were both Foucault and his lover Defert active participants in? On whose behalf?

"In the Libération the day after Foucault's death an article ran: 'Foucault is said to have died of AIDS. As if an exceptional intellectual, because he was homosexual - though extremely discreet about it - represented an ideal target for the disease currently in fashion...We are embarrassed by the virulence of this rumor. It is as if Foucault had to die in shame.' This extraordinarily unseemly article shows how difficult it still was to speak of AIDS in 1984: Connotations of 'shame' were still attached to the disease...We will never know whether Foucault was aware of the nature of his illness..." (p. 218)

..."in his journal, seven months before his death, wrote in his journal. 'I know I have AIDS, but I forget, thanks to my hysteria.'" (p. 218)

"In 1984 in France, the diagnosis of AIDS was not being communicated to the patients who were affected by it." (p. 219)

Defert wrote and dispatched the founding letter of Aides, the organization:
"AIDS is a crisis of sexual behavior for the gay community; the majority of the victims it has struck are from this population, whose culture has recently been built around gymnasium values, perpetual youth and health. We have to face and institutionalize our relation to illness, infirmity, and death. Gays have not addressed the moral, social and legal consequences for themselves. Sexual liberation is not the be-all and end-all of our identity. It is urgent to conceptualize our ways of loving until death, something straights institutionalized long ago. I will not go home to Mama to die." (p. 220)

"Despite the foresight, Defert's letter outlining his platform did not inspire enthusiasm. Most of the doctors and lawyers who were contacted did not reply. As a result, only homosexual militants attended the first informal meeting of Aides, which took place in Defert's apartment on October 4, 1984." (p. 221)

"In many respects, the organization represented a group of mourners...What linked these pioneers in the struggle against AIDS in France was their awareness of a state of emergency...The organization immediately chose to move in several directions: it formed a telephone hotline with a recording, distributed brochures and pamphlets, staged debates and public lectures, but also, already, provided a service destined, unfortunately, for a long future: 'aid to the sick.' Everything was set in place in early 1985, with no financial means except gifts from the first volunteers. They juggled their personal telephone lines for the first hotlines. Edelmann offered his apartment on rue Michel-le-Comte, in the Marais, and it virtually became the office of Aides." (p. 223)

..."AIDS specialists were immediately contacted and were relieved to learn of the creation off Aides...: 'We finally had people ready to bring up matters of importance, people who were not hobbled by homosexual militancy...The founders of Aides had the incredible courage to tell their little home truths to their homosexual brothers.'" (p. 223)

In 1985 a bath owner in Paris expressed: "I don't really want to put up condom dispensers or information boards about AIDS. People come to the baths to relax, not to get all upset.

And Aides was met with considerable resistance: ..."We were perceived as a new Protestant moral league, as if we were preventing those who were making money on the backs of gays from continuing to operate their businesses." (p. 224)

..."It was the history, in short, of a disconcerting, never-ending denial." (p. 224)

"Given the context of 1985 and the urgency of the situation, the pioneers in the fight against AIDS in France decided to venture into gay bars, beginning with those whose owners were more receptive...Of a total of more than a hundred gay spots in Paris, however, fewer than ten establishments accepted the Aides prevention information in 1985-87." (p. 225)

BROCHURE, printed by Aides in February 1985: "The vase majority of people infected with AIDS, over 80 percent, are male homosexuals. Caution: AIDS is contagious. AIDS is sexually transmitted." (p. 225)

Resistance in the gay community continued: In Gai Pied, September 1985: "Tobacco causes cancer, we all know that. Have we stopped smoking? Sex causes illness. Must we stop making love? Modern life causes cancer. Should we retire to Ardeche...How can we believe in a medical establishment that discourages us, that announces nothing but catastrophes of contagion, that marches only to the tune of fear and despair?" (p. 227)

"What is the best way to fight an epidemic? Should the model of an American-style coalition be adopted, one based on identity and multiculturalism? Or should it be the universalist and, as necessary, republican model?" (p. 228)

"In France during the 1980's, then, the "AIDS movement" was not established by homosexual militants but rather by homosexuals who were not involved in identity politics. That made all the difference. On the one hand, such an observation allows us to explain the specifically French delay in mobilizing organizations, a delay that, despite the arrival of Aides in 1985, puts France in the next-to-last position on the list of European countries." (p. 231)

"In an atmosphere often marked by the violence of illness and grief, activist from Aides, often HIV-positive themselves, took care of a family of Haitians, then a Zairean drug dealer, a sixty-year-old female prostitute, and a transvestite without identity papers. They passed out condoms in the Verrières woods, an outdoor cruising spot on the outskirts of Paris, or in the Tuileries. Defert's and Edelmann's apartments again served as the organization's offices (later moved to rue de l'Abbé-Groult in Cité Paradis, then to rue de Belleville, and finally to rue du Château-Landon, where the office is today)...Gradually, the Aides hotline was set up, twice a week at first, in one home or another and then in Edelmann's apartment on rue Michel-le-Comte." (p. 233)

"In France, there was probably on history of AIDS before Rock Hudson's death and another after it. The year 1985 seems to have been the time when the illness appeared in the media..." (p. 235)

What was the reaction of the French government to AIDS? In relation to other nations? (p. 235, 236, 237)

During this whole struggle..."homosexuals felt they were being accused, not for their practices, but as homosexuals, for what they were. Thus they could only react by denying and denouncing such a situation...The degree to which homosexuality is socially acceptable is very important in understanding the fear of AIDS." (p. 241)

"Should an AIDS organization turn to professionals, especially the medical establishment, and acquire information...Or should it be 'communitarian' in nature, a mass movement or infected or exposed individuals, a kind of family where one fought for others as much as one for oneself?" (p. 243)

AIDES initiatives today:

Chapter 10: The Conflagration

2008-11-11T04:38:00.000-08:00

The Pink and the Black: Homosexuals in France Since 1968
_Frederic Martel

" 'A cancer that afflicts only homosexuals? No, it's too good to be true, I could die laughing!' Michel Foucault fell of his sofa, contorted by a fit of uncontrollable laughter..." (p. 187)

"The first mention of the 'gay cancer' in the monthly Gai Pied dates from September 1981. It took the form of a short informative article signed by Antoine Perruchot and titled 'Amour à risques' [At-risk love]: 'The American gay community is in an uproar. In the last several weeks, about forty cases of the very rare Kaposi's sarcoma have been reported in the United States. All the patients are queer." (p. 189)

'Since the beginning of the year, not a week has gone by when the mainstream press has not reveled in sensational headlines about a disease that is preying on us poor queers. More virulent than the plague and gangrene combined...Wait and see. In the meantime, live, do not panic. So fucking is dangerous? What about crossing the street? ' [Cluade Lejeune, Gai Pied, April 1982]

'So, as a result of a disease specific to them, queers are now going back on the list they had unfortunately dropped off, that of social scourges.' [Albert Rosse, Gai Pied, June 1982]

"The first phase, denial of the disease or, at the very least, a belief that it was unlikely to come to France, can be easily explained: no one knew how the disease was spread. The virus had not been discovered, nor had the means of transmission..." (p. 190)

"AIDS appeared soon after the homosexual liberation movement...Its initial progression occurred at a time when homosexual lifestyles had become widespread in France: there was organized cruising, there were baths and back rooms in the provinces, and there was the new specialized neighborhood of the Marais in Paris. In many respects, the homosexual 'theater' of the early 1980s was a boon for the new virus. The way AIDS was spread, via networks and relays fed by the high level of sexual promiscuity and the intermingling of partners, set off a chain reaction that grew exponentially. For homosexuals, the conflagration had started." (p. 192)

"Among the once-anonymous figures made famous by the epidemic, Gaetan Dugas will probably remain the international symbol for a certain irresponsibility on the part of gays. A flight attendant with Canadian Airlines, he was the archetype of the modern homosexual of the early 1980s: blond, mustachioed, twenty-nine years old. Every year he accumulated an estimated 250 sexual partners. In June 1980, he learned that the blotches on his body were due to a very rare form of cancer, Karposi's sarcoma. Rapidly informed by doctors that he had contracted the 'gay caner' he agreed to give them the names of seventy-three of his recent lovers. The epidemiological research, conducted by a method similar to police cross-checking, showed that in 1982 at least forty of the 248 cases diagnosed in North America were among former partners of Gaetan. Duly warned, he nevertheless rejected the advice to be careful and to take protective measures, saying the disease, 'I got it; they can get it too!' He died on March 30, 1984. This 'sex kamikaze' was nicknamed 'Patient Zero.' (p. 195)

"In late 1982, twenty-seven cases of AIDS were reported in France: eight of the patients were homosexuals were had spent time in the United States around 1980, and there was no question that they had been infected there. Four others were also homosexual but seem to have been infected in France; the rest were heterosexual and had traveled to the Caribbean (Haiti) or to equatorial Africa. The disease gradually progressed from being the 'gay cancer' to being the '4H' cancer: homosexuals, heroin addicts, Haitians, and hemophiliacs." (p. 195)

"On January 3, 1983, Willy Rozenbaum removed a lymph node from a French homosexual patient who had spent time in New York...Montagnier placed the sample in a culture under a hood at the Institut Pasteur. 'We had decided to do a probe, as we call it...we had an extraordinary stroke of luck because the first probe was the right one. On the fifteenth day, with the initial culture still alive, we detected the presence of weak but significant 'reverse transcriptase' activity." (p. 196)

"Although the causal link between the virus and particular behaviors on the part of homosexuals was virologically false (the virus was not specific to gays), the truth is that this link was epidemiologically well founded (most of the people in France were homosexual)...Militants fell victim to the same identity trap they claimed to be fighting. They confused AIDS, which attacks homosexuals for 'what they do,' with a disease that would attack them for 'what they are.' " (p. 197)

Sound familiar? What does this have to do with our conversations about identity politics/Foucault?

"The Gay Pride Day festivities of 1983 made no reference to AIDS." (p. 197)

"The discovery of the virus led to the distribution of a questionnaire intended to exclude blood donors who belonged to 'at-risk groups' in 1983...It is understandable why homosexuals felt that any administrative action designed to keep them from donating blood - a social act and a civic duty - was 'a threat of the pink star.'" (p. 198)

How did the reaction of French militants to the issue of blood donation differ from that of Swedish and British militants in 1983? (p. 200)

"Failure to implement the 1983 memo on the screening of donors (homosexuals, drug addicts, prisoners), combined with blood drives in prisons, turned out to be directly responsible for the contamination that occurred in France over two years' time." (p. 201)

"In 1984-85, it was confirmed that LAV (the future HIV) was the virus responsible for causing AIDS. In December 1984, a test (called "Elisa") as developed to detect antibodies to the virus, and its distribution began in 1985. These developments changed the way the disease was viewed: on the one hand, condom distribution changed the way the disease was viewed: on the one hand, condom distribution began to be considered a means of protection (1984); on the other hand, anyone could find out whether he had been exposed to the virus. In 1985, the test revealed that there was a phase of seropositivity, a latency period during which the person was infectious but not ill. The epidemiological prospects took on a new dimension: so-called healthy carriers were now renamed 'asymptomatic carriers.' The scope of the tragedy became clearer. Current patients were only the tip of the iceberg: AIDS was truly a pandemic of enormous proportions." (p. 202)

Official spokespeople began to change their tone: "Dr. Lejeune [of Association des Medecins Gais] declared: Sine the number of partners is a risk factor, we must lower that number. Obviously, the virus must be in the blood: let us therefore refrain from donating our blood. Finally, the virus may be in sperm, so we must use condoms...Every aspect of sexuality is affected by AIDS. Admitting for the first time that the risk of contracting the virus increased with the number of sexual partners, the Association des Medecins Gais chose to depart from its earlier line. September 1984 marked a turning point." (p. 203)

"Their initial denial had made AIDS an invention of American puritanism; now these writers denied that the virus had reached epidemic (pandemic) proportions: a new phase; a new form of denial." (p. 204)

In response to people's assertions that there was probably no one left in the San Francisco bathhouses, Foucault (in 1983) reportedly said, "Don't kid yourself. There have never been so many people in the baths, and it's really extraordinary. This threat hanging over everyone has created a new complicity, a new tenderness, a new solidarity. Before, you hardly exchanged a word; now, everyone talks. Everyone knows precisely why he's there." (p. 205)

"While the condom was emerging as the only effective measure of prevention, nothing was more striking than the homosexual community's delay in accepting the idea. The government shared this reticence about the subject: it was not until 1987 that condom advertising was authorized." (p. 206)

..."For us, using a condom and reducing the number of partners was a return to a bygone era, a crime against love." (p. 206)

"In the first results of the testing conducted by blood banks after the 1985 Fabius decree, the rate of infection among blood donors was extremely high - the highest rate in Europe...This was the epicenter of blood contamination...every week between March and July 1985, between fifty and one hundred people who received tranfusions were infected...and of slightly more than 3,000 hemophiliacs living in France, nearly 50 percent were infected by the virus between 1981 and October, 1985." (p. 207, 212)

"It is possible to see the history of homosexuals' mobilizations against AIDS between 1981 and 1985 as an almost uninterrupted series of misunderstandings, delays, and self-imposed blindness. The 'flighty' way in which homosexual leaders treated the AIDS problem took various and contradictory forms, from denying that the disease existed to denying its importance, from refusing to take preventative measures to refusing to be tested for the virus." (p. 207)

In a published letter from Charles A. in Homophonies (1983), a gay doctor in Nantes says: "Even though I'm a doctor, I am proud to know almost nothing about the 'gay cancer.' The glut of information about a disease I will probably never see in my office makes me sick." (p. 208)

"Homosexual denial is an important fact in the history of the epidemic in France...In 1982-83, France, unlike Sweden and Great Britain, had no homosexual community: the only bond was sexual; it was a community of desire." (p. 209)

What does this have to do with our discussion of identity politics? How are identity politics useful in combatting something like AIDS?

Foucault's lover Daniel Defert: "I have never been a militant of homosexual identity because identity politics is not my style."

Olbermann and Gay Marriage Ban Protest.

2008-11-08T07:44:00.000-08:00

PROPOSITION 8

2008-11-06T03:52:00.000-08:00

if you are from California add yourself to this list...
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/seg5130/

Proposition 8

2008-11-05T10:10:00.000-08:00

I tried to collect several types of viewpoints on what happened today with Proposition 8:

The Advocate
"Prop. 8 Still Ahead with 95.4% of Precincts Reporting - And the Suits Begin"

The first lawsuit to come out of what would appear to be a win by Yes on 8 will be announced at a press conference later today. Diane Olson and Robin Tyler, the first same-sex couple to be married in Los Angeles County last June, will file suit via. their lawyer Gloria Allred. The new lawsuit will contain a new and controversial legal argument as to why Prop. 8 is unconstitutional.

Feministing
"Ballot results: Pro-choice, anti-gay"

Proposition 8 in California: Passed. This is such a crushing loss. I went to bed last night before the final results were in, and woke up to the news that the people of California actually approved the gay marriage ban. So devastating.

The New York Times
"California Appears Likely to Ban Gay Marriage"

But the decision in California, a trend-setter in so many arenas, was seen by opponents and advocates as an important test of the tolerance for gay marriage.

A total of $73 million was spent in the race, a record for a ballot measure on a social issue, resulting in incessant television and radio commercials from both sides. Advocates of the ban played up their belief children could be taught about gay marriage in schools and opponents likened approval of the measure to denying fundamental civil rights.

The LA Times
California voters approve Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriages

"I think the voters were thinking, well, if it makes them happy, why shouldn't we let gay couples get married. And I think we made them realize that there are broader implications to society and particularly the children when you make that fundamental change that's at the core of how society is organized, which is marriage," he said....
"This is the biggest civil rights struggle for our movement in decades. . . ." said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solomonese, speaking from a Proposition 8 gathering at a brewery in the nation's capital. "The outcome weighs incredibly heavily on the minds of every single person in the room."

Pam's House Blend
Ballot initiatives provide a wake up call to the LGBT community about race

And now I feel that a giant snowball of blame game is about to roll over and crush me on this front. Who voted for Yes on 8 is clear now, as exit polls show 70% of blacks, (with black women at 74%) voted for the amendment. That's about 20 points higher than any other racial group. But the blame needs to be put into perspective - blacks represent only 6.2% of California's population and they were about 10% of those who voted...
I've been blogging for years about the need to discuss race in regards to LGBT issues. I hope that this is now the wakeup call for our "professional gays" out there who represent us to come out of their comfort zones and help bridge this concrete education gap. The belief that white=gay is big part of the problem, and as long as black LGBTs are invisible in their own communities and there is a dearth of color in the public face of LGBT leadership, the socially conservative black community can remain in denial that I exist as a black lesbian.

I tried reading conservative blogs to get a balanced opinion on the topic, but they're so full of Obama hate (and McCain hate!) today that no one is talking about Proposition 8 in a positive way, at least that I could find.

Ballot initiatives

2008-11-05T00:25:00.001-08:00

For as much progress as we've made with our newest President-elect, our luck wasn't so great for proposals.

Right now, it appears that Arkansas, Arizona, Florida and even possibly California (though only 62% are reporting right now) have passed initiatives to restrict the rights of homosexuals to marry or adopt.

Homosexual France Between 1975 and 1978

2008-11-02T03:12:00.000-08:00

excerpts taken from The Construction of a Political and Media Presence: The Homosexual Liberation Groups in France Between 1975 and 1978
-by Jean Le Bitoux

"It might be said that everything that marks the breadth of today's French homosexual movement was initiated between 1975 and 1978." - Le Bitoux

FHAR (Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action) was the result of shame ripening into anger. It was able to emerge politically only in the aftermath of the student insurrection and labor strikes of May 1968. It was an unexpected and historic opportunity for the rebellious young homosexual that I then was, but it was spoiled for me when I observed that competing factions disagreed irremediably over both form and content, as much over the way we homosexuals should appear to others as over how we should express the social injustice of which we were victims (p. 249 - Le Bitoux).

I participated in the events of May 1968 in Bordeaux and not on the Boulevard Saint-Michel in the Latin Quarter. I was a co-founder of FHAR, but in Nice and not in Paris. FHAR's political program, which denounced all authorities and all 'micro-fascisms,' as Felix Guattari put it, may have consisted of nothing more than declarations and denunciations. Nonetheless, FHAR existed as a movement only by its taking a position. Its collapse in 1973 left an entire generation forlorn and adrift, unable to do anything else but return to cruising in the dangerous Tuileries gardens, on the terrace of the Cafe de Flore, at Arcadie's Saturday evening dances, where one had to behave respectably, or in the expensive nightclubs of the rue Sainte-Anne (p. 250).

Meetings started up again in 1975 at the Jussieu campus of the University of Paris. The GLH (Homosexual Liberation Group) had been founded (p. 251).

Certainly, the FHAR was dead, but it was necessary to keep alive at least the best part of its political message, while adapting it to new times...The public image of the homosexual was still mainly bourgeois, most homosexuals still felt ashamed of their orientation, and French intellectuals still grandly ignored the whole question, whereas they talk endlessly of it today (p. 252).

There were 'commando' operations, like the one in November 1977 in response to a homophobic incident at a cafe on the boulevard Saint-Germain (the owner had kicked out two men for exchanging a kiss). Several dozen of us showed up at the cafe after one of our general assemblies at the Jussieu campus. We ordered our drinks, then explained to the owner why we refused to pay for them. Then the windows shattered. The waiters and the guard dogs were unable to catch us (p. 253).

We also formed discussion groups, like the one that studied the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray or Sheila Rowbotham - gays and lesbians together in an alliance that would later fall apart (p. 253).

Once we had opened negotiations with journalists, we were able to place a large number of articles in the French dailies and weeklies between 1976 and 1978...(p. 253).

...As for the Communist Party, since the day when its general secretary Jacques Duclos told homosexuals to get psychiatric treatment in the early 1970s, Pierre Juquin, the party's spokesman, explained in the columns of Le Nouvel Observateur why homosexuals, who polluted the noble demonstrations of the Left, had nothing at all to do with the worker's movement (p. 255).

...But for promises to become acts, there had to be a veritable electric shock coming from the homosexuals themselves, mobilized by the GLH-PQ. Such was the first Gay Pride celebration in 1977. SUch were the homosexual candidacies in the municipal elections at Aix-en-Provence in 1977, and especially the legislative elections in Paris in March 1978. Such too, was the Pagoda Affair in January 1978, which involved the banning of a homosexual film festival, a fascist attack, the arrest of a delegation sent to the Ministry of Culture, petitions by prestigious personalities, and finally a riot on the rue Sainte-Anne. Within a few short weeks, a page in French homosexual history would be decisively turned (p. 255).

The festival held at the Pagoda theatre in January 1978 took place in a relatively tense political context. The Minister of Culture refused to authorize the showing of an important number of gay films, including Jean Genet's Chant d'Amour.

In January 1978, I placed an anonymous announcement in the columns of Libération that there would be a protest demonstration that midnight. Remembering Christopher Street some nine years earlier, we occupied the Rue Sainte-Anne with its chic nightclubs, its hustlers, its bathhouses, and its leather bars, in brief, the falsely gay and hypocritically fashionable showcase for Parisian homosexuality. I was hoping for - we all were hoping for - a French 'Christopher Street,' but this nighttime riot could not go very far (p. 257).

...I launched my political campaign in the March 1978 legislative elections with Guy Hocquenghem. It was a unique event in the history of the French homosexual movement (p. 258).

What kind of reformist gains did the GLH-PQ make? (p. 259)

What was happening to the homosexual map of Paris during this during this time? (p. 260)

Apple

2008-10-29T02:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.apple.com/startpage/

No on Prop 8

Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.

Cafe De Flore

2008-10-29T02:09:00.001-07:00

Yesterday our group had a lovely brunch at Cafe De Flore. It was definitely the place to be seen. There were lots of tables outside for people watching. They had a wide selection of food to choose from, Matt got an omelet, it was delicious!

Tuileries

2008-10-29T01:13:00.000-07:00

Around the 8th

2008-10-29T00:53:00.000-07:00

Quais of the Seine

2008-10-28T16:04:00.000-07:00

Queer French | Chapter 5: Gay Paris: Language, Sexuality and Space in the French Capital

2008-10-28T11:11:00.000-07:00

excerpts taken from: Queer French: Globalization, Language, and Sexual Citizenship in France
_Denis M. Provencher

Recent scholarship has observed the emergence of the city as the economic and cultural center in the modern period and underscores the connection between the Western city and globalization...Scholars also maintain that globalization helps shape the character of the modern city, and in turn the city affects the pace and form of globalization...Major cities have emerged as a strategic site not only for global capital but also for the formation of transnational identities (p. 149).

What does this have to do with our "identity" discussions employing Foucault and other theorists?

Large cities draw these identities. Paris, for example, has become home to a high number of French homosexuals in recent decades, and 46 percent of France's gay men lived in Paris in the early 1990s...many write of the 'importance of getting one's gay self to a big city' (p. 150, 151).

Specifically, Paris' gay neighborhood Le Marais serves as a canonical gay reference or 'lieu de mémoire' for many of France's homosexual citizens (p. 153).

Situating Gay Paris in Historical and Contemporary Contexts

Scholars have traced the emergence of various homosexual establishments between 1880 and 1920 in northern Paris in the district of Montmartre, which has been qualified as the 'center of anarchism, Bohemianism and illicit sexuality.' During the interwar period, gay venues spread to other parts of the city to include bars and nightclubs on the Champs-Elysées and on the Left Bank at Montparnasse as well as in working-class dance-halls on the Rue de Lappe near Place de la Bastille. In contrast to gay Berlin of this same era, which remained largely separate from the larger urban landscape, gay Paris remained mainly a mixed (hetero and homo) space as Paris' homosexuals frequented many of the same bars and nightclubs as other French citizens. With the emergence of French existentialism in post-war France of the 1950s, gay bars, nightclubs and restaurants such as Le Fiacre on Rue du Cherche-Midi eventually emerged on Paris' Left Bank in the district of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, however, gay night life would eventually return to the Right Bank in the 1970s on the Rue Sainte-Anne between the Palais Royal and the Opera House. The 1980s and 1990s brought about another urban shift, marked by visibility whereby Le Marais and les Halles developed the heaviest concentration of gay-oriented bars and restaurants in the city and replaced many of those found in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Montmartre and the streets around Sainte-Anne. Le Marais celebrates gay visibility (p. 155).

In this chapter, the author cites that there are 185 gay venues throughout the city...(p. 158).

The author asks many of his 'informants' to draw their own gay/lesbian maps of Paris. Analyze these maps - how are they different based on the particular situation of the person drawing the map? French-male/lesbian/Jewish/Beur..

Place Pigalle continued...

2008-10-28T11:10:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pictures of St. Lazare (this is the train station we all went to on our CEA trip to Deauville)

Monet's painting of St. Lazare...it is basically the same today

Queer French | Chapter 1: An Assault on French Gay Culture

2008-10-28T10:47:00.001-07:00

excerpts taken from: Queer French: Globalization, Language, and Sexual Citizenship in France
_Denis M. Provencher

Is there a "universal gay identity?"

The emergence of various North-Atlantic constructions of gay culture has resulted in the circulation of a 'universal gay identity' across various national boundaries. Both print and electronic media have helped to transmit this 'universal gay identity.' (Specifically Gai-Pied and TÊTU in France).

Têtu appeared on French newsstands in July 1995 and represents the most recent attempt among politically engaged French sexual citizens to establish a national gay magazine geared specifically toward a gay male and to a lesser extent lesbian readership. (Started with the financial support of Yves Saint-Laurent) (p. 32).

Being 'Gay' in French Culture

...gay and lesbian movements around the world: 'demonstrate a Foucauldian point - they are both a part of and apart from the societies around them, both resisting and participating in - even reproducing - dominant public discourses' (p. 33). (* Read from top of page 34).

'French Singularity' is due to a spirit of universalism in France that stems from centralized, hierarchical control. In theory, French egalitarian philosophy provides a sweeping, universal experience/outlook for the French citizen regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, etc.

...unlike US gays and lesbians who exhibit a strong sense of individualism and at times identify so closely with their sexual identity that it is seen as a kind of 'ethnic' separateness, gays and lesbians in France see themselves, first and foremost, as citizens of the French republican state (p. 34).

Important examples from the text:

(Read from p. 40): "Voici 12 choses que vous ne pourrez plus..."

(and from p. 42): "Les différences entre hétéros et homos"

(and from p. 44): McDonalds

Think about the PaCS example as well. Did homosexuals gain the right to have civil unions through their identity category in this case?

Place Pigalle, Saint Lazare, Rue des Martyrs

2008-10-27T15:28:00.000-07:00

Layla, Alison, Simone, and Meggie:

Just a little Sarah Palin treat.

2008-10-26T15:41:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across this very enlightening interview of S.P. (that's what I call her)
Be Prepared.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caGjG_9nFwY

Transgender Teacher

2008-10-22T06:20:00.000-07:00

Sorry all my posts seem to be elementary school centered, but I came across this article today, Kids Pulled From Transgender Teacher's Class

A teacher's gender reassignment surgery has caught the attention of some parents who want to know why the school district didn't notify them ahead of time about the change.A music teacher at Foxboro Elementary School, who was formerly a woman, returned to school as a man at the beginning of the school year...
Gavlak said the district consulted with lawyers and determined that legally, it could not disclose any information about the teacher's gender change."We will not be discussing personal matters with either the students, or the parents or the community at large ... because we cannot," Gavlak said...
Parent Angela Weinzinger, who has three children at the school, said she has since transferred her children out of the class."I wasn't given the opportunity to make a choice on what I wanted to do with the situation," Weinzinger said.So far, 23 students from 15 different families have transferred their children out of the music class and into a physical education class.

The article explains that the disclosure would violate HIPAA privacy laws, and the school district seems to have handled the situation in the proper way.

Celebrities Doing Thier Part

2008-10-21T16:57:00.001-07:00

http://perezhilton.com/2008-10-21-chelsea-handler-wants-you-to

"art is life and life is art"

2008-10-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

For those of us who attended the Loire Valley excursion this past weekend, we saw a van with the words "Futuring Company" written on the side, with the picture of two bald woman inside. Everyone who walked by was extremely curious of what a "futuring company" could be. The two woman inside did not help settle our imaginations either.

Through inquiry, I decided to see what this was all about.

It turns out that this company is actually a lesbian couple, whose dream was to "[carry] on making [contemporary] art together and being art together since their official wedding ceremony in 1991."

Their ultimate goals are to challenge societal ideas about art, gender and sexual identity. "With a powerful and confrontational message, EVA & ADELE defy the conventional description of what an artist is."

"The idea that "art is life and life is art" is what guides them in their constant effort to free themselves from pre-established paradigms and to create truly revolutionary art."

Photos taken from:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3246/2354124029_c779a1631e.jpg?v=0
http://www.claireoliver.com/artists.html?artist_no=21

"And Tango Makes Three"

2008-10-20T06:43:00.000-07:00

And Tango Makes Three is the real title of the book which I so eloquently called "the gay penguin book" in class today.

While it has received several awards, it also topped the challenged book list for the American Library Association in 2006 and 2007. It was published in 2005, and the list for 2008 has not yet been released, but I would expect it to make a prominent showing this year, as well.

Book Review:
From School Library Journal (via Amazon)
Starred Review. PreSchool-Grade 3-This tale based on a true story about a charming penguin family living in New York City's Central Park Zoo will capture the hearts of penguin lovers everywhere. Roy and Silo, two male penguins, are "a little bit different." They cuddle and share a nest like the other penguin couples, and when all the others start hatching eggs, they want to be parents, too. Determined and hopeful, they bring an egg-shaped rock back to their nest and proceed to start caring for it. They have little luck, until a watchful zookeeper decides they deserve a chance at having their own family and gives them an egg in need of nurturing. The dedicated and enthusiastic fathers do a great job of hatching their funny and adorable daughter, and the three can still be seen at the zoo today... An author's note provides more information about Roy, Silo, Tango, and other chinstrap penguins. This joyful story about the meaning of family is a must for any library.-Julie Roach, Watertown Free Public Library, MA

Gay Paris Blog and Map

2008-10-20T01:08:00.000-07:00

I have invited everyone once again to both the blog and the google map. The map is actually an entirely new map, created again on googlemaps (due to problems with the first one). Please add yourself to this map even if you had already done so for the original one.

If you haven't created a google account yet - do so. Once you do, email me the account information and I will invite you to be both an author on the blog and a collaborator on the map through that account.

Queer French

2008-10-20T00:38:00.000-07:00

Just a quick reminder to all: the resource copy of Queer French: Globalization, Language, and Sexual Citizenship is to remain at CEA. It should not be taken from the center and should be used for only a couple of hours and then returned to the shelf. Thanks.

Eureka!

2008-10-19T13:47:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across some articles from the archives of Discover Magazine this weekend that I thought might be intriguing to all, that, and I thought you could use some more reading. :) So here are some highlights:

The Real Story on Gay Genes
Homing in on the science of homosexuality—and sexuality itself
by Michael Abrams
published online June 5, 2007

"William Reiner, a psychiatrist at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, explored the question of environmental influences on sexuality with a group that had been surgically shifted from boys to girls. These boys had been born with certain genital deformities; because it is easier to fashion a vagina than a penis, the boys were surgically made into girls at birth. In many cases they were raised as girls, kept in the dark about the surgery, and thought themselves female long into adulthood. Invariably, Reiner found that the faux females ended up being attracted to women. If societal nudging was what made men gay, at least one of these boys should have grown up to be attracted to men. There is no documented case of that happening."

Raw Data: Do Brothers Make You Gay?
Boys with older brothers are more likely to be gay. But is it nurture or nature?
by Stephen Ornes
published online September 1, 2006

"Moreover, the more brothers a man has, the more likely he is to be gay. According to Bogaert, every older brother increases the probability that a man is homosexual by 33 percent. The average estimate of the base rate of male homosexuality is around 4 percent of the general population. So a man with 1 older brother has around a 5.3 percent probability of being homosexual. For the youngest of 3 brothers, that figure rises to 7 percent. Hypothetically, a man with 9 older biological brothers, according to Bogaert's estimates, has about a 50 percent chance of being gay. Notably, Bogaert's estimate breaks down at 12 brothers, when the probability exceeds 100 percent.

Why Do We Know So Little About Human Sex?
by Anne Fausto-Sterling
published online June 1, 1992

"Kinsey and his co-workers discovered a continuum of sexuality. They developed a heterosexual-homosexual rating scale, which they divided into seven categories, from exclusively or predominantly heterosexual to exclusively or predominantly homosexual. Where sex is concerned, it turned out, you find all sorts of shades of gray. They found that 37 percent of the male population surveyed had some overt homosexual experience, that most of these experiences occurred during adolescence, and that at least 25 percent of adult males had more than incidental homosexual experiences for at least three years of their lives.
...
Helms concluded by gay-baiting both of Laumann’s coinvestigators- -distinguished social scientists and acknowledged homosexuals--repeating that the surveys are part and parcel of the homosexual movement’s agenda to legitimize their sexual behavior. "

Castel | Gentry Lane

2008-10-17T04:35:00.000-07:00

Through a friend, I somehow managed to get on the list at Castel (rue Princesses) to see our friend, Gentry Lane, work her burlesque magic. Voila:

"That's so gay!"

2008-10-15T03:36:00.000-07:00

Suggested substitutions:
That's so...
"...For-get it!"
"...Bor-ing!"
"...English!"
"...5 text messages ago!"
"...adults who wear their pants to their abdomen!"

Folles, Swells, Effeminates, and Homophiles

2008-10-14T14:55:00.000-07:00

Folles, Swells, Effeminates, and Homophiles in Saint-Germain-des-Prés of the 1950s: A New ‘Precious’ Society?
_George Sidéris

In Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin described the atmosphere in a homosexual bar in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter of Paris during the 1950s. Among the bar’s clients, Baldwin focused on “les folles [the effeminate queens], always dressed in the most improbable combinations, screaming like parrots the details of their latest love affairs…they always called each other ‘she’.” (p. 219)

Saint-Germain-des-Prés at that time was the principal setting for male homosexual life in Paris. But homosexual life was not confined to this one quarter. The rue du Colisée and the avenue Gabriel, the Champs-Elysées and the streets around the place de l’Etoile, the Montparnasse quarter and Montmartre quarter, the rue des Martyrs, the Saint-Lazare railway station, the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève in the Latin Quarter (famous for its balls where ‘the men wear evening gowns, the women trousers’), place Pigalle, the rue de Lappe near the Bastille, and the grands boulevards in general were also heavily frequented by homosexuals. This list should also include such traditional sites of homosexual cruising as the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes, the quays along the Seine, the Tuileries Gardens, the Champs de Mars, and the city’s many bathhouses. Finally, there appeared in these years a number of homosexual venues, or rather venues regularly frequented by homosexuals, in the area around rue Saint-Anne (p. 220).

Saint-Germain-des-Prés, however, had a special place in the homosexual geography and sociability of the period. The air of freedom, merry-making and non-conformity given it by existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, the presence of numerous artists and writers, the theatres that put on politically committed plays, in short the more open and tolerant attitude that prevailed there, probably explain in part this homosexual presence in Saint-Germain, where one might encounter, for example, open homosexuals like the writers Jean Genet and Jean Cocteau or the actor Jean Marais (p. 220).

Homosexuals showed themselves openly in the cafés, particularly the Flore, the Reine Blanche, the Royal Saint-Germain, and the Pergola (as well as the Fiacre at 4, rue du Cherche-Midi) (p. 220).

Thus, the post-war homosexual geography of Paris was very different from that of pre-war Paris, which had been dominated by the Montmartre, Pigalle and Montparnasse quarters of the city (p. 220).

Effeminates in general and those of Saint-Germain in particular encountered disapproval, not only from the established authorities, but also from homophiles who did not accept their culture of effeminacy and preciousness, which they considered caricatural and likely to provoke an increased repression of homosexuality. The homophilic discourse on effeminacy and the homosexual life at Saint-Germain shifted in the course of the 1950s from disapproval and disparagement to frank outright hostility. In the end, increased policing and a new political situation had encouraged the development among homosexuals themselves of a ‘homophobia’ directed against effeminates (p. 228).

Jean Genet

2008-10-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

excerpts from Queer French: Globalization, Language, and Sexual Citizenship in France
_Denis M. Provencher

Jean Genet (French author) serves as the archetypal ‘outlaw’ or ‘dissident citizen’ in twentieth- and twenty-first-century France by creating a discursive space where his characters remain somewhat on the social margins by naming their same-sex desires and sex acts without articulating a ‘homosexual identity.’ (p. 53)

For the first half of the 20th century, French homosexual consciousness was informed by French literary figures such as Proust, Gide, Cocteau, Genet (who all deal with homosexuality in their writing). The presence of French writers like Gide and Genet continue to inspire various ‘coming out’ style for French gays and lesbians.’ (p. 93)

“Authenticity”

Genet’s non-identitarian language of desire that defies sexual categories serves as a ‘queer’ French language of sexual citizenship. (p. 55)

Genet’s characters generally avoid the practice of naming or categorizing themselves…In order to remain free, one must find the means in the linguistic system all the while avoiding terms that define identity. Characters such as Querelle and Gil seem to understand the dangers of a stable identity, and look for the means to avoid homosexual identity, without equally dismissing their desires. Seblon, the only character to completely assume his identity ultimately find himself in prison. (p. 64)

What does ‘authenticity’ signify to you? In the context of sexuality and sexual identity?

Is ‘authenticity’ social, natural, genuine, contextual…?

Provencher claims that ‘authenticity is a cultural, textual phenomenon.’ (p. 55) Do you agree?

He sites Judith Butler who sees gender ‘as a construction with no beginning or end – an on-going discursive practice. Whereas the individual’s sex is determined by his/her chromosomes, the individual’s gender identity becomes inscribed on the surface of the body through such artifices as gestures and language…Hence, the ‘realness,’ ‘naturalness’ or ‘authenticity’ of gender emerges over time through a variety of repetitive and performative acts.’ (p. 56)

Authenticity relates to an abstract notion invested with local cultural values, beliefs and assumptions, whereas ‘authentification’ represents the process by which cultural values are repeatedly performed into being by group members. (p. 57)

Language plays a critical role in these acts of ‘authentification.’

Quoting William Leap, Provencher states, “‘speaking is the same as doing; the words we use to describe ourselves and our relationships are crucial in creating our culture.’ Hence, gay identity and cultural authenticity are not pre-discursive; they exist and persist through enunciation and reiteration.” (p. 57)

Quoting Mireille Rosello, “Repeating is the most powerful form of enactment. Repeating is a speech act endowed with the maximum authorized level of power…the truth of a stereotype lies in its successive repetitions.” (p. 57) (Physical example of the cross used).

How does this relate to Foucault’s ideas about homosexuality?

How does this relate to our reading - Folles, Swells, Effeminates and Homophiles in Saint-Germain-des-Pres of the 1950s?

Jean Genet

Richard Dryer writes of Genet: “His name evokes a flavour, a set of images, a world – you don’t have to have read his work to know what sort of thing you’re going to get when someone says such-and-such is Genet-esque, nor to be able to catch illusions to him in so many novels, films and theatre pieces or to grasp the significance of the frequent references to him in the major intellectual trends of the post-war years.” (p. 59)

Genet iconography includes: flowers, prisons, drag queens, dirt, melancholy unshaven criminals and sailors, crucifixes, crotches, tattoos and scars. (p. 59)

While Genet follows in the modernist narrative tradition set forth by such writers as Proust, Gide and Cocteau, he also begins to break away from such convention…’Gidean homosexuality is strangely undemanding, almost to the point of being indistinguishable from a homophobic rejection of gay sex…inverts are, according to Proust, compelled to see with disgust their unnatural selves reflected in the specular presence of their fellow inverts. (p. 60)

(In contrast) Genet signs his own name to his writings on the subject of homosexuality; he creates a narrator who self-identifies as homosexual; the narrator and characters recount undeniably homosexual acts. (p. 61)

Who does Genet write about?

While Proust and Gide chronicle the lies of upper-middle class and aristocrats of Paris society, Genet recounts the experience of the abject of society including among others its drag queens, prostitutes, pimps, assassins, thieves, prisoners, sailors, and soldiers. (“Extreme modernity”) (p. 61)

Excerpt

Excerpt from Genet’s novel Notre-Dame des fleurs (1948) (an initial sexual encounter between the drag queen Divine and her ‘masculine’ lover Mignon):

“Loving each other like two young boxers who, before separating, tear off each other’s shirts, and when they are naked, astounded by their beauty, think they are seeing themselves in a mirror, stand there for a second open-mouthed, shake – with rage at being caught – their tangled hair, smile a damp smile, and embrace each other like two wrestlers, interlock their muscles in precise connections offered by the muscles of the other, and drop to the mat until their warm sperm, spurting high, maps out on the sky a milky way where other constellations which I can read take shape: the constellations of the Sailor, the Boxer, the Cyclist, the Fiddle, the Spahi, the Dagger. Thus a new map of the heaves in outlined on the wall of Divine’s garret.” (p. 62-63)

Unlike previous authors like Proust, Gide and Cocteau who do not allow their characters to ‘parade before an audience with an open fly,’ Genet generally allows his characters to expose their body parts and to participate in vivid sexual acts observed by a homosexual narrator.” And “although he opens his character’s fly, it is not always a penis that falls out. For example, in Miracle de la Rose, an open zipper provides for the release of more than a hundred doves. (p. 63)

“In the final scene of the novel, Genet’s tough guy Mignon finds himself in prison and decides to write to his lover Divine to express his feelings and ask for some help...” (p. 63) *

Un Chant d’amour (1950)

Genet’s use of prison walls in Un Chant d’amour (1950) is notable – where such a physical barrier that generally represents a boundary between prisoners, actually serves as a form of communication between prisoners with the help of graffiti, holes, and chains of flowers or smoke. (p. 65)

Genet in Contemporary French Popular Culture

Jean-Paul Gaultier’s ‘Le Mâle’

Jean-Paul Gaultier’s cologne for men, ‘Le Mâle’ calls upon a stock of Genetesque characters. Similar to Genet’s novels that offer voyeuristic and homoerotic depictions o soldiers, sailors, criminals and the like, this advertisement displays two sailors, as seen through a naval-ship port hole. The two men sit face to face at a table, in front of a blue nautical backdrop, and display their muscular, tattooed biceps in a type of arm-wrestling match. it is noteworthy that Gaultier uses the same male model for both of the characters in this image, which gives the appearance of two twin sailors who are consumed by each other in a narcissistic gaze. The image recalls the scene from Notre-Dame des fleurs… (p. 66) *

Paris’ Queen Nightclub

French Popular AIDS Fiction

Pierre et Gilles Photography: “Merde à le Pen” (p. 73) *

School for Social Justice Pride Campus

2008-10-14T00:36:00.000-07:00

Chicago, IL. - This 100 student public school was created in 1985 in reaction to the extreme harassment and drop-out rates of homosexual students in public schools. Today, the school is aspiring to expand its small 100 student population to a 600 student campus; welcoming all who were severely harassed and bullied in regular public schools. This school gives these kids an opportunity to learn, when prior, they were too afraid to attend school.

A similar high school, "The Harvey Milk High School", "boasts a graduation rate of 95 percent of its students -- all of whom were at risk of or had dropped out -- well above the city average of 52 percent."

The Pride Campus follows the same curriculum as neighboring districts, however, they also "incorporate lessons about, sexual identity in history and literature classes, officials said."

"It's about creating another option for kids," Edelman said. "When it comes down to it, though, it is all about having a choice and providing high-quality options for students, whether they are gay or not."

Many residents do not approve of this school based on religious or other personal reasons. Others fear that if students are not mixed, acceptance will not be created. The founder and director of GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) completely agrees with the need of acceptance:

"Absolutely, we should work for [acceptance] across the board," said Jennings, the GLSEN executive director. "But it's not going to change overnight, and in the meantime, these kids aren't going to graduate."

"The most important factor, according to the GLSEN study, is the existence of a state law that protects students from harassment based on their sexual orientation."

"If we keep doing nothing, we are going to keep getting these horrifying levels of harassment, greater rates of skipping, not going to college and more tragic violence like the murder of Lawrence King," he said. "Those are our choices. We can continue to do nothing, and we know the results, or we can save young people's lives and offer them an education and a future."

Here is the full article:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/10/13/gay.friendly.school/index.html

Citation

2008-10-13T02:08:00.001-07:00

http://citationmachine.net/

shakespeare and co. bookshop

2008-10-12T10:24:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of the new Shakespeare and Company. What a magical place!

27, rue de Fleurus

2008-10-08T03:29:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas's apartment for my course on Expatriate Writing. It's near metro Notre-Dame-des-Champs and Saint Placide in the 6th. The street itself is mostly residential, but it's near a school so I wouldn't recommend visiting during after-school-rush period (I felt like a weirdo taking pictures). There's a sign by the door that's more noticible than the sign at Shakespeare and Company. From my paper:

" There was a similarly small plaque decorating the building at 27, rue de Fleurus. Gertrude Stein might be pleased with her sign, stating most prominently her name and that she was an American writer, with a smaller note of the period when her brother Leo shared the home, as well as a line about Alice Toklas and the way the hosted artists and writers... There is no mention of her involvement in the modernist movement, or of any specific works."

The pictures are in slideshow form below, and the larger, original versions can be seen on Flickr

War and Soldierhood

2008-10-08T01:04:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from: A History of Homosexuality in Europe
_Florence Tamagne

WWI

"The English army enacted severe sanctions against sexual relations between men: two years of prison for any act; ten years in the case of sodomy. In spite of that, homosexual activity still went on in the ranks: during the war, 22 officers and 270 soldiers were tried for homosexuality." (p. 27)

"By bringing men closer together in situations of extreme danger, the war was a fertile ground for the development of homosexual friendships; and thus it served to relieve homosexuality of some of the tension and drama surrounding it. Warrior aesthetics is based largely on homoeroticism; by focusing on the male body, by accentuating virile characteristics..." (p. 28)

"If the war allowed a blooming of hitherto discreet and timorous homosexuality, it also served as an eye-opener for men who, in normal times, would have looked on such relationships with contempt. Most people still thought of the homosexual as an effeminate and affected man. The friendships created in the trenches were built on a different logic, that of male societies welded together by a code of honor and shared experiences. Most of the homosexual friendships on the front were established between young officers and their men."
(p. 29)

Gentry Lane Sightings | by Matt Sidow

2008-10-07T13:38:00.000-07:00

As you may have known, Fashion Week was this past week in Paris. I was just now looking through the photos of some of the shows and parties on style.com and a few blogs when I discovered photos of Gentry Lane at a couple of the parties! Here is a photo of her at the Fendi party (celebrating Dita Von Teese's Birthday). I was also at a party on saturday night at Maxim's and this morning, while looking for photos, read something that said she was there as well! I guess she is all over the place...

Nightwood Chapter 7 | Go Down, Matthew (Part II | 131-149)

2008-10-07T01:00:00.000-07:00

Chapter Summary (Part II)

We are still at Nora's and the conversation continues between Nora and the Doctor, with Nora's unceasing account of her nights with Robin. This continual rehashing of the same events (much narration with very little plot movement) typifies modernist writing.

In her agony, it is almost as if Nora expects the Doctor to save her - or to rescue her from her tortured love and existence. Throughout their interaction Nora and the Doctor increasingly spin around each other's frantic words.

(Throughout the book, we hear little from Robin herself in terms of desire and perspective - in this way, she remains eternally elusive.)

The Doctor has enough of Nora's wailing at some point and leaves. He goes to the his regular café and laments the fact that "they all come to me" - to wring out their sadness. The chapter ends with his cursing the people in the bar for their cruelty and harsh judgment.

Nora:
"Sometimes, if she got tight by evening, I would find her standing in the middle of the room, in boy's clothes, rocking from foot to foot, holding the doll she had given us - 'our child' - high above her head, as if she would cast it down, a look of fury on her face." (p. 133)

The Doctor:
"Do you think Robin had no right to fight you with her only weapon? She saw in you that fearful eye that would make her a target forever. Have not girls done as much for the doll - the doll - yes, target of things past and to come? The last doll, given to age, is the girl who should have been a boy, and the boy who should have been a girl! The doll and the immature have something right about them, the doll, because it resembles, but does not contain life, and the third sex, because it contains life but resembles the doll. The blessed face! It should be seen only in profile, otherwise it is observed to be the conjunction of the identical cleaved halves of sexless misgiving! Their kingdom is without precedent. Why do you think I have spent near fifty years weeping over bars but because I am one of them! The uninhabited angel! That is what you have always been hunting!" (p. 134)

"Pray to the good God, she will keep you. Personally I call her 'she' because of the way she made me; it somehow balances the mistake." (p. 135)

Nora to the Doctor:
"You know what none of us know until we have died. You were dead in the beginning." (p. 137)

The Doctor:
"The more you go against your nature, the more you will know of it - hear me, heaven!" (p. 146)

suppuration (p. 138): the formation or discharge of pus

zenith (p. 138): highest point or state; culmination

propinquity (p. 138): nearness in time and place

Chi vuol la Zingarella (p. 139): from the classical Opera Zingari in Fiera by Giovanni Paisiello

Sonate au Crépuscule (p. 139): Beethoven

Der Erlkönig (p. 139): a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Who is Sylvia (p. 139): F. Schubert

gaol (p. 143): jail

Group 3: Rue de l'Odeon

2008-10-05T08:38:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth, Lauren, Alison

Nightwood Chapter 7 | Go Down, Matthew (Part I | 112-130)

2008-10-04T07:38:00.000-07:00

Chapter Summary

The Doctor visits Nora, who is still lamenting her relationship with Robin. Nora writes incessantly to Robin and the Doctor beseeches her to stop - to put down her pen. He launches into his twisting and turning speech and tells the tale of a whore in London and speaks of his own struggle with sexuality - of his battle with God in it. He implores at a church while exposing himself (he takes out his 'Tiny O'Toole), "I am not able to stay permanent unless you help me, O Book of Concealment! C'est le plaisir qui me bouleverse!" (It is pleasure that shatters me!) (p. 120).

Nora recounts the final hours of her relationship with Robin. Nora goes to visit Jenny Petherbridge. Jenny's house is a haunt of Robin - a picture of Robin as a baby hangs on the wall (which had gone missing from Nora and Robin's) and a baby doll on the bed. Of the doll Nora says, "We give death to a child when we give it a doll - it's the effigy and the shroud; when a woman gives it to a woman, it is the life they cannot have, it is their child, sacred and profane..." (p. 128) She goes on:

"When I got home Robin had been waiting, knowing, because I was late, that something was wrong. I said, 'It is over - I can't go on. You have always lied to me, and you have denied me to her. I can't stand it anymore."

"She stood up then, and went into the hall. She jerked her coat off the hook and I said, 'Have you nothing to say to me?' She turned her face to me. It was like something once beautiful found in a river - and flung herself out of the door." (p. 128)

Terra damnata et maledicta! (p. 113): Damned and cursed earth

papelero (p. 114): stationer

Saxon-les-Bains (p. 114) - Switzerland

Madame de Staël (p. 114): a French-speaking Swiss author living in Paris and abroad. She influenced literary tastes in Europe at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (p. 116): a 6-volume work by Edward Gibbon

grue (p. 118): crane (literally in french)

prie-Dieu (p. 119): a worshiping bench in a church

Turdus musicus (124):

peritoneum (p. 125): In higher vertebrates, the peritoneum is the serous membrane that forms the lining of the abdominal cavity — it covers most of the intra-abdominal organs

'Dead March' in Saul (p. 127): Funeral march by Handel

Rue de L'Odéon | Group 1

2008-10-04T07:25:00.000-07:00

Alanna, Layla and Molly

Group 2: Rue de l'Odeon

2008-10-02T10:15:00.000-07:00

Lee, Iquo, and Meggie

Gentry Lane

2008-10-02T00:41:00.001-07:00

Everyone! Remember! We will have the pleasure of having Gentry Lane, MFA (specialization: expatriate artistic communities in Paris between the wars) with us on Monday, October 6 to discuss Natalie Barney and her illustrious literary salon. Please be on time for Monday's class.

Group 4: Rue de L'Odeon pictures

2008-10-01T11:33:00.000-07:00

Caitlin, Matt, Simone

7, rue de l'Odeon

12, rue de l'Odeon

Plaque at 12, rue de l'Odeon

Rue de L'Odéon | Booksellers

2008-09-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

Odéonia: The Country of Books | (Paris Was a Woman) Chapter 1
_Andrea Weiss

Twenty-three year old Adrienne Monnier realized a childhood dream in November 1915 when she opened a small bookshop on the rue de l'Odéon in the sixth arrondissement. Its location in the heart of the artistic and intellectual centre of Paris was no accident:

"The Left Bank called me and even now it does not cease to call me and to keep me. I cannot imagine that I could ever leave it, any more than an organ can leave the place that is assigned to it in the body." (Adrienne Monnier)

The story began in Paris on a cold, gusty March afternoon in 1917. A shy young woman named Sylvia Beach hesitated at the door of a Left Bank bookshop and lending library, La Maison des Amis des Livres. The owner, a self-assured young French writer and publisher named Adrienne Monnier, got up quickly from her desk and drew her visitor into the shop greeting her warmly. The two talked the afternoon away, each declaring love for the language and literature of the other.

In 1921 Shakespeare and Company moved around the corner so that it was almost directly opposite Adrienne's bookshop, and Sylvia moved into Adrienne's apartment a few doors away. After that, Bryher felt that:

"there was only one street in Paris for me, the rue de l'Odéon. It is association, I suppose, but I have always considered it one of the most beautiful streets in the world. It meant naturally Sylvia and Adrienne and the happy hours that I spent in their libraries."

The sister bookshops on the rue de l'Odéon soon became a cultural centre of Europe, serving as a gathering place where writers from all over the world met, collected their post and read the latest in the proliferation of literary magazines.

NIghtwood: Chapter 6 | Where the Tree Falls

2008-09-30T04:10:00.000-07:00

Chapter Summary

We see the reintroduction of Baron Felix and his son, Guido, in this chapter. Felix is concerned about his son, who is described as, "Mentally deficient, and emotionally excessive, an addict to death; at ten, barely as tall as a child of six, wearing spectacles, stumbling when he tried to run, with cold hands and anxious face, he followed his father, trembling with an excitement that was a precocious ecstasy." (p. 96)

Guido is interested in entering the church and this disturbs Felix. He writes a long letter to the Pope comparing religious and cultural styles between Italy and France. As expected, he recieves no answer. He decides to return to Austria, hoping that Guido's religious career can transpire there. Before leaving Paris, Felix seeks out the doctor and finds him at Cafe de la Mairie du VIe. They go to dine in the Bois together.

They discuss Robin (Guido's mother). Felix says, "I find that I never did have a really clear idea of her at any time. I had an image of her, but that is not the same thing. An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties." (p. 100)

He asks the doctor why Robin married him and then tells the doctor that Jenny Petherbridge had come to see him. While there, Jenny spoke of the little girl, Sylvia, who had been at her home with Robin. Jenny tells of how this little girl had fallen in love with Robin and in the end, Robin treated the child with abandon - a story which distresses young Guido. Felix confesses his fears about his son to the doctor and they end the discussion with Robin.

The chapter ends in Vienna, where Guido and Felix are met by Frau Mann. The odd triangle sits in a cafe and the Baron cannot escape his own obsessions with the higher classes and ranks.

What is the symbolism behind Jenny Petherbridge's desire to purchase one of the portraits of Baron Felix's grandparents?

litanies (p. 97): prayers consisting of a number of petitions

chasubles (p. 97):

the Credo (p. 97): statement of religious belief

Kabyle (p. 99): an ethnic group in Algeria

Grand Marnier (p. 100): is a liqueur created in 1880 by Alexandre Marnier-Lapostolle

Sections to think about:

"There was in her [Robin] every movement a slight drag, as if the past were a web about her, as there is a web of time about a very old building. There is a sensible weight in the air around a thirteenth-century edifice that is unlike the light air about a new structure; the new building seems to repulse it, the old to gather it." (p. 107)

Felix asks the doctor what Robin writes when she writes to him from America. "She says, Remember me. Probably because she has difficulty in remembering herself." (p. 109)

Stein & Hemingway | contributed by: Elizabeth

2008-09-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

The following passage reminded me of the quote we talked about last class: "As they violated the rules of sex, they obeyed those of gender." I think the following passage really describes her relationship with her lover and how they would stick to their designated gender roles within their relationship.

"Miss Stein was very big but not tall and was heavily built like a peasant woman. She had beautiful eyes and a strong German-Jewish face…She talked all the time and at first it was about people and places.

Her companion had a pleasant voice, was small, very dark with her hair cut like Joan of Arc in the Boutet de Monvel illustrations and had a very hooked nose. She was working on a piece of needlepoint when we first met them and she worked on this and saw to the food and drink and talked to my wife. She made one conversation and listened to two and often interrupted the one she was not making. Afterwards she explained to me that she always talked to the wives." (8)

Another passage I found interesting was that in which Hemingway was recalling a previous conversation with Gertrude Stein in which she says to Hemingway, "The main thing is that the act male homosexuals commit is ugly and repugnant and afterwards they are disgusted with themselves. They drink and take drugs, to palliate this, but they are disgusted with the act and they are always changing partners and cannot really be happy…In women it is the opposite. They do nothing that they are disgusted by and nothing that is repulsive and afterwards they are happy and they can lead happy lives together." (13)

Excerpts from A Moveable Feast (memoirs by Hemingway)

Nightwood: Chapter 5 | Watchman, What of the Night?

2008-09-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

Chapter Summary

Late one night, Nora goes to seek the advice of the Doctor. She makes her way up the six flights of stairs in his run-down building to the tiny room he rents. When she arrives at his door and hears (from the novel): "his 'come in' she opened the door and for one second hesitated, so incredible was the disorder that met her eyes...In the narrow iron bed...lay the doctor in a woman's flannel nightgown. The doctor's head, with its over-large black eyes, its full gunmetal cheeks and chin, was framed in the golden semi-circle of a wig with long pendant curls that touched his shoulders...Nora said, as quickly as she could recover herself: 'Doctor, I have come to ask you to tell me everything you know about that night.'" (p. 70-71)

The Doctor spends a large portion of the chapter delving into his thoughts about 'the night' - in its many senses, according to him. At the outset of their conversation, he asks Nora her thoughts on the night. She says, "I used to think that people just went to sleep, that they were themselves, but now, now I see that the night does something to a person's identity, even when asleep." (p. 72) The Doctor prods on. He asks, "Have you thought of the night, now, in other times, in foreign countries - in Paris? When the streets were gall high with things you wouldn't have done for a dare's sake, and the way it was then...I can see you have not! You should, for the night has been going on a long time." (p. 73)

There is always dissonance between the Doctor's long monologues and Nora's short responses - as if they do not hear one another at all. The Doctor's long ramblings are difficult to plow through, but once you do, you will find beauty in small passages - like poetry. For example, "Burn Rome in a dream, and you reach and claw down the true calamity. For dreams have only the pigmentation of fact. A man who has to deal in no colour cannot find his match, or if he does, it is for a different rage. Rome was the egg, but colour was the tread." (p. 77) This is lyrical writing - but nonsensical on a certain level. (Like Stein).

At the end of a very long tale of many things at the same time, the Doctor comes to the question at hand and speaks of the night of Nora's inquiry. He tells Nora of where Jenny and Robin first met - at an Opera - Rigaletto. Even the Doctor is no fan of Jenny. He says, "She has a longing for other people's property, but the moment she possesses it the property loses some of its value, for the owner's estimate is its worth. Therefore it was she took your Robin." (p. 87) He goes on, "I have always thought I, myself, the funniest looking creature on the face of the earth; then I laid my eyes on Jenny - a little, hurried decaying comedy jester, the face of the fool's stick, and with a smell about her of mouse-nests."

He ends with a final description of what happened in the carriage that night between Jenny and Robin, "And then I saw Jenny sitting there shaking, and I said: God, you are no picture! And then, Robin was going forward, and the blood running red, where Jenny had scratched her, and I screamed and thought: 'Nora will leave that girl some day; but though those two were buried at opposite ends of the earth, one dog will find them both.'" (p. 95)

"...and there is a metallic odor, as of beaten irony in a smithy." (p. 71)

connivance (p. 73): the act of coniving

the palaces of Nymphenburg (p. 73): was the summer residence of the rulers in Bavaria (in Munich)

Ah, Mon Dieu! La nuit effroyable! La nuit, qui est une immense plaine, el le coeur qui est une petite extrémité! Notre Dame-de-bonne-Garde! (p. 74): Ah, My God! The night is horrifying! The night, which is an immense plain, and the heart which is a small extremity! (Notre Dame...Name of a church in Longpont-sur-Orge \ Dept. 93 outside of Paris)

bretelle (p. 76): suspenders/strap

cantiques (p. 76): hymn

L'Echo de Paris (p. 80): A literary journal published between 1884 and 1944

Misericordia (p. 81): mercy (in the religious sense)

pissoirs (which in the 1920s in Paris were ubiquitous) (p. 81):

garrulity (p. 81): excessive talkativeness

pteropus (p. 82):

mortadellas (p. 84): a large smoked sausage made of beef, pork, and pork fat and seasoned with pepper and garlic

profligate (p. 84): the wildly extravagant

Saint John Chrysostom (c. 347–407) (p. 85): archbishop of Constantinople, was an important Early Church Father

Parsifal (p. 86): an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner

The Lily of Killarney (p. 86): an opera in three acts by Julius Benedict

Ocarina (p. 87): an ancient flute-like wind instrument

"Now was there ever any man seen to sleep in the Cart, between Newgate and Tyburn (p. 87): Tyburn was a village in the county of Middlesex close to the current location of Marble Arch. The two places referencing execution and death. Executions took place at Tyburn until the 18th century.

saltarello (p. 87): was a lively, merry dance first mentioned in Naples during the 13th century

corbeille (p. 89): basket

"Adam's off ox" (p. 91): an older American phrase meaning somebody you don't know

Don Antonio and Claudio (p. 92): the reference is from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

"So Cibber put it, and I put it in Taylor's words: 'Did not Periander think fit to lie with his wife Melissa after she had already gone hent to heaven" (p. 93): Periander was the second tyrant of Corinth, Greece in the 7th century BC. Among his acts were sending young boys from Corcyra to be castrated in Lydia, and the murder (and possible necrophiliac rape) of his own wife, Melissa.

Montaigne (p. 92): one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance (16th c.)

Catherine of Russia (p. 93): reigned as Empress of Russia for 34 years, from 1762 until her death 1796

Crupper (p. 94): a piece of tack used on horses and other equids to keep a saddle, harness or other equipment from sliding forward

Musée Carnavalet

2008-09-24T05:18:00.000-07:00

Natalie Barney "l'Amazone"
_Portrait by her lover Romaine Brooks (1920)

Romaine Brooks | Natalie Barney

2008-09-23T23:59:00.001-07:00

excerpt from Wild Girls: Paris, Sappho and Art - The Lives of Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks
_Diana Souhami

In Paris in 1905 Romaine bought a house in the Avenue du Trocadéro in the sixteenth arrondissement. In decoration, she used muted effects and scarce colour to reflect her sense of self. At roof level she had a glass studio with views of the Seine and the Eiffel Tower. She wanted each room, and all the furniture and paintings to provide backgrounds for her paintings.

Most of her portraits were of women: Woman in Black Hat, Woman in Green Hat, The Flowered Hat...In 1910 Romaine had her first solo exhibition, it opened on 2 May at the Galéries Durand-Ruel. She covered the red walls with beige and showed thirteen of her portraits.

They schmoozed together and called it 'dancey prancey.' Romaine was Angel, or Angel Birdie, Natalie was Nat Nat. They were 'Darling' to each other. When they met, in 1915, Romaine was forty-one, Natalie thirty-nine. Together they read Freud and Jung, James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence, 'but not his novels.'

Natalie was drawn to Romaine's strangeness and vulnerability. She said Romaine had no disguise, no pose and was a 'a real head and soul in an unreal world.' She tirelessly told her she was beautiful and a genius, her singing voice perfect, her paintings immortal. Romaine was, she said, dearer to her than her own life. 'I love my Angel better than anyone else in the world and prove it.' In return, she asked that Romaine should need her above all others.

For Romaine, Natalie's warmth and kindness were an unfamiliar gift. Natalie was not judgmental, nor did she recoil from the drama of Romaine's life, but the relationship was based on an understanding that Romaine must be above comparison. Romaine said that Natalie 'had an unusual mind of the best quality,' but she decried her Friday salons as gatherings of drunkards and society women; it was not a fair description of Gertrude Stein, Colette, Sylvia Beach, Lily de Gramont et al.

In 1920 she did a portrait of Natalie with nothing wild or Amazonian about it apart from a small model of a prancing horse in tribute to Gourmont's views. She made her look comfortable and friendly.

Their lives entwined. In Paris they lazed about on the grass by the lilac bushes in Bois de Boulogne. On Capri they stayed in the Villa Cercola, which Romaine acquired in 1918; it had terraced gardens, guest apartments and furniture made by local craftsmen...They opened a joint bank account. Natalie talked of their being together for the rest of their lives and of sharing the same grave: 'My angel is my only real companion and friend.'

Gertrude Stein | The Writer and Her Muse

2008-09-23T11:47:00.001-07:00

Chapter 2: The Writer and Her Muse
_Andrea Weiss

"She was large and heavy with delicate small hands and a beautifully modeled and unique head...She had a certain physical beauty and enormous power...I was impressed with her presence and her wonderful eyes and beautiful voice - an incredibly beautiful voice...Her voice had the beauty of a singer's voice when she spoke." (p. 61, Alice B. Toklas describing her lover Gertrude Stein)

Like the rest of the world, Gertrude Stein believed genius to be male...In her relationship with Alice, she assumed the more conventionally male role, or, as Catherine R. Stimpson describes it, "As they violated the rules of sex, they obeyed those of gender." (p. 64)

"Of herself, Gertrude wrote: 'Slowly and in a way it was not astonishing but slowly I was knowing that I was a genius...It is funny this thing of being a genius, there is no reason for it, there is no reason that it should be you...' " (p. 64)

Alice and Gertrude: Gertrude's writing and Alice's 'wifely' role as nurturer and caretaker were inseparable, interdependent entities, much as Gertrude and Alice were. In one of Gertrude's notebooks, she intermingled their names, coming up with 'Gertrice/Altrude.' (p. 65)

Her writing: Gertrude created new relations between words, even between the same words. She did not call this repetition, but rather insistence, since through the repeating, meanings change...She used words, not to describe the world around her, but to reproduce that world in language and sound. Consequently, her writing seemed more and more abstract, to the point where many could not follow her. (p. 68)

A
ROSE IS A
ROSE IS A
ROSE IS A
ROSE
She is my rose.

"If you realized that she worked insistently, every day, to be published the first time by a real publisher, publishing house, after she was sixty. But I wonder who will do that, who will have the insistence, you understand, the obsession, the surety, the purity of insistence to do that. No concessions. She used to tell me, 'Don't you ever dare to make concessions. Then one walks down, down, down, down." (p. 74, Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew on Stein)

Stein and Picasso had a great friendship. "She was the one who had believed in him. She was the one whom he painted. She was really his great friend and protector...Their important and volatile friendship contined for over four decades, from 1905 to Gertrude's death. Fame cost Picasso most of his other early friendships but it never came between the two. Although neither spoke nor read the other's mother tongue, they seemed to understand each other implicitly. Gertrude always felt that there was a 'particularly strong sympathy between Picasso and myself as to modern direction.' During one of the eighty or ninety sittings for Picasso's portrait of her, she mentioned that she heard with her eyes and saw with her ears. Picasso immediately agreed to this method." (p. 77)

Janet Flanner: "Her studio was the most fascinating of any place in Paris, because everyone did go there, about once a week she'd have a tea party...And she always led the conversation, well Gertrude led everything...When she laughed everyone in the room laughed. It was more than a signal, it was a contagion of good sprits...While Gertrude orated and made the pattern of the conversation, Miss Alice B. Toklas was sitting behind a tea tray. It was as if Gertrude was giving the address and Alice was supplying all the corrective footnotes." (p. 78)

Are there addresses in the reading that are relevant to our map creation? Where did Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas live? Where are the buried? Please note.

Musée Carnavalet

2008-09-23T07:11:00.000-07:00

We will venture out to Musée Carnavalet on Wednesday, September 24, after having first met in the classroom and discussing Gertrude Stein. Please have the Stein reading completed and be ready to discuss, as our time on Wednesday will be short.

Musée Carnavalet: Hôtel Carnavalet | 23, rue de Sévigné | 75003 Paris

We will be searching out a famous portrait of Nathalie Barney, "l'Amazone," painted by her most important and constant lover, Romaine Brooks (artist and painter).

Chapter 4 Nightwood | The Squatter

2008-09-22T04:13:00.000-07:00

The chapter begins with an introduction of a new character in the story: Jenny Petherbridge, a middle-aged villain, who is now one of Robin's lovers. Barnes devotes pages to describing this character - her faults and her general nauseating effect. Robin, Jenny and others are gathered together in Jenny's home. Jenny orders carriages to take her and her guests down the Champs Elysées and to the Bois de Boulogne (a common path of amusement at the time). Ridiculous Jenny's jealousy and obsession for Robin exhibit themselves as she tries to orchestrate the seating of her guests and her lover.

The chapter culminates with Jenny, in her rage, striking Robin again and again and then chasing after her as Robin escapes the carriage on rue du Cherche-Midi. And then we learn, "It was not long after this Nora and Robin separated; a little later Jenny and Robin sailed for America." (p. 69)

accouchée (p. 59): to be delivered (when giving birth).

La Dame aux Camélias (p. 61): a novel by Alexandre Dumas.

Commedia dell'Arte (p. 61): a form of improvisational theatre that began in Italy in the 16th century and held its popularity through the 18th century.

"Ecoute, mon gosse, va comme si trente-six diables étaient accrochés à tes fesses!" (p. 66): Listen, my lad, drive as if 36 devils were hanging from your buttocks.

"Fais le tour du Bois!" (p. 66): Do a tour of the the woods!

Group 1: Alison, Lee, Michelle, Simone

2008-09-21T14:53:00.000-07:00

Group 3: Layla, Iquo, Elizabeth

2008-09-21T14:50:00.000-07:00

Group 4: Alanna, Matt, Kiersten, Meggie

2008-09-21T14:43:00.000-07:00

Caitlin's Set

2008-09-21T14:42:00.000-07:00

Caitlin missed class on Wednesday - but subsequently went to the addresses we searched for and took some stellar photos. Here is her link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/likeatvset/sets/72157607412387364/

Meggie & Alanna Article | Transsexual Wins Lawsuit

2008-09-21T09:56:00.000-07:00

Meggie and Alanna sent me a link to a CNN article they thought relevant to the class. We are going to discuss their thoughts and the article tomorrow in class (Monday, September 22).

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/09/19/transsexual.discrimination/index.html

Nightwood Chapter 3 | Night Watch

2008-09-19T06:29:00.000-07:00

Chapter Summary

The chapter opens with a description of Nora and her salon in America. Nora and Robin both attend the Denckman circus in 1923 and meet each other there. They leave together and Robin follows Nora home and they stay in the United States for a time and then travel the cities of Europe together, eventually arriving in Paris and staying. Robin buys an apartment on the rue du Cherche-Midi. Their existence there is tortured by their unsustainable, violent love. Robin's nights are spent wandering the streets, cafés and bars of Paris. Nora's nights are tormented by her lover severed from her. One night, Nora stands at the window of their apartment and sees the silhouette of her lover with another woman, cowering - this sight a major breach in their relationship.

How would you describe Nora? What passages specifically would you choose to illustrate how you imagine her?

"those who love a city, in its profoundest sense, become the shame of that city, the détraques": (p. 47) deranged people

The Seventh-day Adventist Church (p. 47): observes its Sabbath on Saturday, the original seventh day of the Judeo-Christian week.

There was no ignominy in her: (p. 48) disgrace, dishonor.

On the rue du Cherche-Midi, did you find the, "fountain figure, a tall granite woman bending forward with lifted head, one hand held over the pelvic round as if to warn a child who goes incautiously."? (p. 50)

Nightwood: Chapter 2 | La Somnambule

2008-09-16T14:23:00.000-07:00

(Note: please bring this book with you to each class - particularly when we are working on creating our maps)

The chapter opens with the doctor, who lives near St. Sulpice in the 6th arrondissement. He brings Felix (both have returned to Paris from Vienna at this point) to the Café de la Mairie de VIe. The doctor is summoned to attend to a woman who has fainted in a nearby hotel. They go to the hotel and find Robin, laying on the floor of the room, unresponsive. Almost in the same instant as the doctor has managed to rouse her, he subsequently steals a one-hundred franc note from her bed (to Felix's astonishment).

Felix is immediately infatuated with Robin and pursues her. They spend time together in Paris - walking in gardens and museums. They marry and he takes her to Vienna to instill in her his ideas of grandeur and old society. Robin becomes pregnant and goes wandering - haunting the churches of Paris and beyond. Robin delivers a boy and feels nothing for the child. The chapter ends with her abandoning Felix and her son.

Chapter Notes:

Neurasthenia (p. 29): condition with symptoms of fatigue, anxiety, headache, impotence, neuralgia and depressed mood.

Pitt the younger (p. 30): was a British politician of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783.

the douanier Rousseau (p. 29): Henri Rousseau, painter (May 21, 1844 – September 2, 1910).

(Rousseau - “Le Rêve”, 1910)

dompteur: (p. 29)

(Painting: Juliette Gréco by Robert Humblot - Musée Carnavalet)

Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving

2008-09-16T14:13:00.001-07:00

Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving
_Audre Lorde

"Racism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance.

Sexism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one sex and thereby the right to dominance.

Heterosexism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one pattern of loving and thereby its right to dominance.

Homophobia: The fear of feelings of love for members of one's own sex and therefore the hatred of those feelings in others.

The above forms of human blindness stem from the same root - an inability to recognize the notion of difference as a dynamic human force, one which is enriching rather than threatening to the defined self, when there are shared goals." (p. 45)

Invisible Women

2008-09-16T13:47:00.000-07:00

Invisible Women: Lesbian Working-class Culture in France, 1880-1930
_ Francesca Canade Sautman

This article speaks "of but not for voices that have been traditionally ignored, silenced, or distorted from all sides because they were at the same time the voices of women, lesbians and working-class people." (p. 177)

How does the author use the term "Sapphist"? "Tribade"?

"It has been claimed that [during this time period] lesbianism was not taken very seriously. Men supposedly thought it was 'charming,' nonthreatening, presenting no obstacle to their interest in women...It may have been true if the lesbians were affluent, refined ladies, but this assessment is called into question by the images of poorer lesbians, who were often painted in the most abject and misogynous colors." (p. 180)

"The conditions of women in the labor force changed dramatically during the course of the nineteenth century." (p. 181)

How did these conditions shift during this time period?

"Unveiling lesbian culture within any segment of the working class may seem like a hopeless enterprise, because the discussion of women's sexuality within working-class culture is seriously hindered by the presupposition of repugnance for homosexuality and of hegemonic aggressive heterosexuality among workers." (p. 182)

Lesbians and the Sex Industry

"Invisible and visible at once: Such was the paradoxical subsumed existence of lesbian sex workers. While the day-to-day lives of these early lesbians seldom reach us, 'lesbian acts' fantasized or even invented by the broader culture were made quite visible and even enjoyed widespread popularity." (p. 187)

"The lesbian life of sex workers inside brothels is well known...They show that amorous and romantic relationships, 'households,' between women, were as important as the possibility of sex between them." (p. 189)

Lesbians in Jail Culture

Sex workers, as well as many other women from the working class, spent a considerable amount of time in jail, for uncontrolled prostitution, various types of theft, abortion, infanticide, and occasionally, homicide. By the early 19th century, crowded jail conditions were held responsible...for promoting the 'ravages of lesbianism'. Same-sex sexual activity and relationships were as frequent among women in jails as in brothels." (p. 193)

For women of these days, it was all too easy to slip from the working class into the underclass. Job scarcity and professional limits kept young working-class girls out of many trades, and unions even participated in this exclusion. Workers' political parties inveighed against the destruction of the family by the bourgeois industrial machine and extolled traditional roles for women, and the absence of independent means of support made it difficult for many women to face life alone. For working-class women who wanted to live same-sex loves, the imperatives of economic survival were overwhelming." (p. 195)

Compare the examples the author uses of Lorrain and Guérin and Madeleine Pelletier. What do you see? What are the differences in their experiences (at the same moment in time) and why?

St. Sulpice | Class, Wednesday, September 17

2008-09-14T11:14:00.001-07:00

For class on Wednesday, September 17, we will meet at l'église Saint-Sulpice in the 6th arrondissement (as usual, at 10:30am | Please be on time). To be more precise, Place Saint-Sulpice, 75006 at the fountain. Here is how you get there.

You will need your cameras and other means of documenting what we find. Before going, we will discuss in class on Monday, September 15 more in depth what we will be doing there.

A History of Homosexuality in Europe | Tamagne

2008-09-12T04:00:00.000-07:00

A History of Homosexuality in Europe:
Berlin, London, Paris 1919-1939
_Florence Tamagne

"The homosexual identity, unlike the homosexual act, is a historical phenomenon. It is not universal, but temporal; it is not induced, but constructed. Therefore, it supposes the creation of a specific environment and an awareness that enabled homosexuals to define themselves as a group." (p. 207)

At what moment can one say that a person recognizes himself as a homosexual? (p. 207)

Is it simply that time when he accepts his sexual preferences, when he calls himself 'homosexual,' or is it only when he asserts his membership in a homosexual community, as a political statement?
(p. 207)

The notion of 'homosexuality' still takes many forms cross-culturally and continues to be disputed: When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran) spoke to students at Columbia University this year, he claimed: "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country"

When does Tamagne date the emergence of 'homosexuality' in European countries?

The Medical Model: Discourse
(using Foucault's version of the term)

"The homosexual identity was built around different definitions of homosexuality, arising from the abundant turn-of-the-century medical literature...While it may have been studied first as a demonstration of hysteria, it soon spilled over into the realm of mental illness and came to form its own distinct category, with its own characteristics, internal classifications and symptoms." (p. 209, 210)

"Carl Westphal, a young Berlin neurologist and the first psychiatrist to study inversion on a scientific basis, asserted that homosexualtiy was a congenital disease and not a vice." (p. 211)

"Only Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, himself a homosexual and the inventor of the concept of uranism ("the heart of a woman in the body of a man"), stood out. He...asserted that homosexuality was not a disease but a simple sexual variation which was of no more consequence than the color of one's hair." (p. 211)

Homosexuality as a disease to be 'cured:'
"Steinach...deduced that it was possible to cure homosexuality by a surgical operation on the testicles." (p. 214)

Dr. Otto Emsmann thought "homosexuality could be cured either by implanting healthy sexual glands, by the transplantation of healthy testicles, or by hypnosis." (p. 214)

The 'third sex' theory: (those who felt feminine, "the heart of a woman in the body of a man") was a counterpoint to other existing discourses of the time.

Quoting Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, "It is a curious thing to have a feminine soul captive in a man's body, but it seems that this is my case." (p. 215)

Another discourse: Psychoanalysis and Freud

"...the homosexual is neither a criminal nor a congenital mental patient, he is a neurotic: the predisposition to homosexuality arises in a man from the discovery that the woman does not have a penis. If he cannot give up the penis as the essential sexual object, he will inevitably be turned off by a woman. She may even represent a threat, if the absence of the penis is perceived as the result of mutilation (castration anxiety)." (p. 218)

"As regards female homosexuality, Freud paid it relatively little attention; later, he filled in with several psychoanalytical cases. The genesis of female homosexuality is symmetrical to the male; castration anxiety still plays an essential role, for, if the girl does not accept her lack of penis, she will struggle to assert her masculinity." (p. 219)

"Inverts go through an intense phase of fixation on their mothers during childhood, and then, identifying with her, they take themselves as sexual objects (in the narcissistic way of young boys, they seek someone similar to themselves whom they will love as their mother loved them)." (p. 219)

Freud insisted that "Psychoanalysis is not going to solve the problem of homosexuality. It must be satisfied to reveal the psychic mechanisms which lead to the decisions governing the choice of the object and to trace how these mechanisms relate to instinctual desires." (p. 219)

What did Freud contribute to the study of homosexuality?

Perspectives

André Gide on his own homosexuality: "No, I do not believe by any means that my particular tastes could have been transmitted by heredity: [these are] acquired characteristics, non-transmissible. I am this way because I was thwarted in my instincts by my education, and the circumstances...what I imagine, you see, is that I must have inherited an inordinately demanding sexuality, which was thwarted, repressed voluntarily by several generations of ascetics, and of which, to some extent, I am now subjected to built-up pressure." (p. 223)

Maurice Sachs speaks of his experience, "I passionately wished to be a girl, ans I was so unaware of how grand it was to be a man that I went so far as to piss sitting down. Even better! I refused to go to sleep before Suze [his nanny] had sworn to me that I would wake up to find my sex had been changed...As this occurred when I was about four years old, one would have to believe that since my earliest childhood I had inclinations which very especially predisposed me toward homosexuality." (p. 227)

Conflicting cultural discourses have made the lived experience of homosexuals often unreconcilable: Hans Henny Jahnn met Gottlieb Harms, his great love, at the age of fourteen in 1908...He fought his sexuality until 1913. After their 'wedding,' in July of that year, they still could not reconcile their physical desires with their spiritual aspirations: "We talked it over. He told me that having lain together with me made him insane...He perceived me, my man, as if I were a prostitute sick with desire. He felt disgust for my body and my soul...Now, I am dirty and sinful, and he is, too. And we cannot purify ourselves." (p. 228)

Quentin Crisp

Quentin Crisp is the best representative of the flamboyant homosexual and his course throughout England in the 1920s and 2930s is rather unique. He recalls his youth in his autobiography, The Naked Civil Servant (1968), which is as impertent and funny as he was himself. He said, "I became not only a confirmed homosexual, but a blatant homosexual. That is, I submitted my case not only to the people who knew me but to those who were completely foreign, as well. It was not hard to do. I wore make-up at a time when, even on women, eye shadow was a sin." (p. 233)

The Naked Civil Servant was made into a film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F03UUdslBY

An interview with Quentin Crisp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpL_-r4y9EA&feature=related
(4 min in)

The official Quentin Crisp website: http://quentincrisp.com/bio/QCbyQC.html

The Birth of a Homosexual Community

Was there any homosexual community to speak of, in the 1920s?

"Between the wars, the foundation for a homosexual community was laid in the establishment of common references. Literature was one of the most fertile fields for developing the essence of the homosexual culture." (p. 265)

And a useful reference to our reading in Nightwood:

"Another emblematic figure of the time was Barbette, the transvestite trapeze artist who fascinated the crowd, and in particular Maurice Sachs, who was a spectator in 1926: 'I may never have seen anything more graceful than this girl dressed in feathers who sprang so boldly from the trapeze, did a somersault and caught herself in full flight by a foot, and then, taking a bow, pulled a big curly wig off her head and revealed that she was a young man! This little American appears at the Variety under the name of Barbette; I went to see him at the Daunou Hotel where he is staying [in Paris], and found him lying completely naked on his bed, his face covered with a thick layer of black pomade. Bisexual on the stage and bi-colored at home." (p. 273)

Judith Butler | Gender Trouble

2008-09-10T00:10:00.000-07:00

One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one.
- Simone de Beauvoir

Strictly speaking, "women" cannot be said to exist.
- Julia Kristeva

Woman does not have a sex.
- Luce Irigaray

The deployment of sexuality...established this notion of sex.
- Michel Foucault

The category of sex is the political category that founds society as heterosexual.
- Monique Wittig

The very subject of women is no longer understood in stable or abiding terms.
- Judith Butler

"It is not enough to inquire how women might become more fully represented in language and politics. [Or homosexuals for that matter]. Feminist critique ought also to understand how the category of 'women,' the subject of feminism, is produced and restrained by the very structures of power through which emancipation is sought." (p. 2)

What does Butler mean when she speaks of the "ontological integrity of the subject before the law?" (p. 3)

"Am I That Name?" (homosexual? lesbian? woman? p. 3): A question produced by the very possibility of the name's multiple significations.

"If one "is" a woman [or a man, or a homosexual], that is surely not all one is; the term fails to be exhaustive, not because a pregendered 'person' transcends the specific paraphernalia of its gender, but because gender is not always constituted coherently or consistently in different historical contexts, and because gender intersects with racial, class, ethnic, sexual and regional modalities of discursively constituted identities." (p. 3)

"Is the construction of the category of women [or homosexuals] as a coherent and stable subject an unwitting regulation and reification of gender relations?" (p. 5)

Is this contradictory to emancipatory aims?

"Perhaps a coalition needs to acknowledge its contradictions and take action with those contradictions intact. Perhaps also part of what dialogic understanding entails is the acceptance of divergence, breakage, splinter, and fragmentation as part of the often tortuous process of democratization." (p. 14)

"An open coalition, then, will affirm identities that are alternately instituted and relinquished according to the purposes at hand; it will be an open assemblage that permits of multiple convergences an divergences without obedience to a normative telos of definitional closure." (p. 16)

"To what extent do regulatory practices of gender formation and division constitute identity, the internal coherence of the subject, indeed, the self-identical status of the person?" (p. 16)

"To what extent is 'identity' a normative ideal rather than a descriptive feature of experience?" (p. 16)

"The heterosexualization of desire requires and institutes the production of discrete and asymmetrical oppositions between "feminine" and "masculine," where these are understood as expressive attributes of "male" and "female." (p. 17)

Butler quotes Wittig saying, "The lesbian is the only concept I know of which is beyond the categories of sex." (p. 19)

Why does Wittig make this claim?

Foucault uses the example of Herculine (the hermaphrodite): why?

"Gender is performatively produced and compelled by the regulatory practices of gender coherence. Hence, within the inherited discourse of the metaphysics of substance, gender, proves to be performative - that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, gender is always a doing." (p. 25)

"The 'presence' of so-called heterosexual conventions within homosexual contexts as well as the proliferation of specifically gay discourses of sexual difference, as in the case of 'butch' and 'femme' as historical identities of sexual style, cannot be explained as chimerical representations of originally heterosexual identity. The repetition of heterosexual constructs within sexual cultures both gay and straight may well be the inevitable site of the denaturalization and mobilization of gender categories. The replication of heterosexual constructs in non-heterosexual frames brings into relief the utterly constructed status of the so-called heterosexual origin. Thus, gay is to straight not as copy is to the original, but, rather, as copy is to copy." (p. 31)

"To claim that gender is constructed is not to assert its illusoriness or artificiality, where those terms are understood to reside within a binary that counterposes the 'real' and 'authentic' as oppositional. As a genealogy of gender ontology, this inquiry seeks to understand the discursive production of the plausibility of that binary relation and to suggest that certain cultural configurations of gender take the place of 'the real' and consolidate and augment their hegemony through that felicitous self-naturalization." (p. 33)

Nightwood Reading Guide | Chapter 1 Bow Down

2008-09-08T08:06:00.000-07:00

(NOTE: page numbers have been updated and now correspond with your copy of the novel)

House of Hapsburg (p. 1): the ruling Houses of Austria (and the Austrian Empire and its successors) where the dynasty reigned for over six centuries.

“Then walking in the Prater...” (p. 2): The Prater is a large public park in Vienna's 2nd district Leopoldstadt

"Then walking in the Prater he had been seen carrying in a conspicuously clenched fist the exquisite handkerchief of yellow and black linen that cried aloud of the ordinance of 1468, issued by one Pietro Barbo..." (p. 4): Pope Paul II, born Pietro Barbo, was Pope from 1464 until his death in 1471. "He decreed that Jews were to walk around the Roman Corso with a rope around their necks in order to amuse the Christian population" (taken fromThe Practice of Cultural Analysis Bal, Gonzales p. 153). This event highlights the historical persecution of the Jews. Felix is "heavy with impermissible blood" (p. 2)

Genuflexion (p. 2): the act of bending the knees in worship or reverence.

"Over the fireplace hung impressive copies of the Medici shield and, beside them the Austrian bird." (p. 5) The Medicis were a powerful and influential Florentine family from the 13th to 17th century.

The Medici shield

Heraldry (p. 5): Heraldry in its most general sense encompasses all matters relating to the duties and responsibilities of officers of arms. To most, though, heraldry is the practice of designing, displaying, describing, and recording coats of arms and badges.

Circumulocution (p.8 ): Using many words to describe something simple.

Loquacity (p. 8): the quality of being very talkative; garrulous.

"His rooms were taken because a Bourbon had been carried from them to death." (p. 9) The House of Bourbon was an important European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty. Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century.

Madame de Sévigné (p. 9) was a French aristocrat, remembered for her letter-writing. Most of her letters, celebrated for their wit and vividness, were addressed to her daughter.

Goethe (p. 9) was a German writer (1800s).

Loyola (p. 9): Ignatius of Loyola was the principal founder and first Superior General of the Society of Jesus (16th century).

Brantôme (p. 9) was a French historian during the 16th century.

Ribaldry (p. 9): a genre of sexual entertainment.

Goy (p. 9): A Hebrew word for "nation" or "people".

Unexpurgated (p. 14): (of a piece of writing) not censored by having allegedly offensive passages removed.

Ameublement (p. 14): furnishings.

Jansenism (p. 15): The theological principles of Cornelis Jansen, which emphasize predestination, deny free will, and maintain that human nature is incapable of good. They were condemned as heretical by the Roman Catholic Church.

Prince Arthur Tudor (p. 15) was the first son of King Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York, and therefore, heir to the throne of England and Wales.

King Henry VII (p. 15), King of England, Lord of Ireland, born Henry Tudor (Welsh Harri Tudur), was the first monarch of the Tudor dynasty.

Chamberlain (p. 15) is the officer in charge of managing the household of a sovereign or other noble figure.

Rutebeuf (p. 17) was a 13th century French writer.

Mountebank (p.17) is any charlatan or quack.

"...nor yet a thirteenth-century Salome dancing arse..." (p. 17): Salome was an icon of dangerous female seductiveness. Salome dancing before Herod or with the head of the Baptist on a charger have provided inspiration for Christian artists.

Leo X (p. 19), born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici (December 11, 1475 – December 1, 1521) was Pope from 1513 to his death.

Gymnosophist (p. 20): any of a sect of ascetics in ancient India who went naked and practiced meditation.

Breton (p. 20) refers to Brittany.

Ponte Vecchio (p.23) is a Medieval bridge over the Arno River, in Florence, Italy, noted for still having shops built along it, as was once common.

The Arno (p. 23) is a river in the Tuscany region of Italy.

Norse Vessel (p. 24) is a Viking ship.

The Wittelsbach (p. 24) family is a European royal family and a German dynasty from Bavaria.

City of Dark Nights

2008-09-06T06:36:00.000-07:00

"Perhaps the greatest enigma of Paris literary life between the wars was, and remains, Djuna Barnes. Men and women of all persuasions found her irresistible, falling for her considerable beauty, glamour, intelligence and sharp wit. Today, darker and more disturbing qualities than these continue to attract readers and scholars to her life and work...

Born in 1892, Djuna Barnes grew up in a 'bohemian' household which included not only her grandmother, parents and their three children, but one of her father's several mistresses and her various children. This family has been called sexually unconventional but is perhaps more aptly described as exploitative and sexually abusive...

In 1910, at the age of 18, Djuna started publishing poetry. Two years later she moved to Greenwich Village, began art studies...and found a reporting job...thus embarking on a journalistic career that would continue intermittently for 25 years."

Djuna came to Paris in 1919. Djuna, like many others, had a brief affair with Natalie Barney, the quintessential lesbian of Paris at the time. Djuna met the love of her life, Thelma Wood, an American silverpoint artist and sculptor in 1920.

"The first few years with Thelma Wood were genuinely joyful ones. From 1922, the two women lived together on the Left Bank, first at 173 Boulevard Saint-Germain and later at 9 rue Saint-Romain."

"Before the city of light became a city of dark nights for Djuna Barnes, she was an integral part of the vibrant female artistic community which congregated at Natalie Barney's Friday salon." In 1928, Barnes published Ladies' Almanack, it "quickly became the talk of the town, with much speculation as to who was who." The illustrated book was a satire of Natalie Barney's lesbian soirées and salon.

Barnes was a serious member of Modernist community in Paris. "The intrepid Djuna Barnes not only was on first-name basis with T.S. Eliot, but was also the only person allowed to call James Joyce 'Jim' - something that even Hemmingway didn't dare."

A sketch of James Joyce by Djuna Barnes

"In the writing of Nightwood, her greatest work, she began closest to home, with her relationship with Thelma - which by now was not ordinary by any standards - and over the years kept re-writing and transforming her novel towards the extraordinary, the fantastic and the bizarre...The initial relationship between Nora and Robin in Nightwood clearly recalls the early, idyllic days between Djuna and Thelma. But by 1924 or early 1925, the romance between Djuna and Thelma began to turn increasingly volatile, strained by their excessive drinking and Thelma's promiscuity...

A desire for revenge, an attempt to exorcise her personal demons, and those magical, inexplicable motives for which writers write, even in their darkest hours, were forces which combined to propel Djuna Barnes into the voracious writing project she engaged in for over eight years, from 1927 to 1935, which eventually became Nightwood."

Barnes: "Suffering is the decay of the heart. In the beginning, after Robin went away to America, I searched for her in the ports. I sought Robin in Marseille, in Tangier, in Naples, to understand her, to do away with my terror. I said to myself, I will do what she has done, I will love what she has loved, then I will find her again. At first it seemed that all I should have to do would be to become 'debauched,' to find the girls that she had loved; but I found that they were only girls that she had forgotten. I haunted the cafés where Robin had lived her nightlife; I drank with the men, I danced with the women, but all I knew was that others had slept with my lover."

"Ultimately Nightwood is much more than a road map to the disintegration of a tortured love affair. It has been considered a visionary allegorical tale of the rising tide of fascism across Europe...Some have read it as a feminist reworking of Dante's Divine Comedy, in which the price paid for personal and sexual freedom is judgement and damnation; others have claimed it is a lesbian rage against the clergy."

Barnes' writing is not easy to follow. Janet Flanner (American journalist and writer in Paris) recounted, "Djuna had written a play that she showed to T.S. Elliot; he told her that it contained the most splendid archaic language he had ever had the pleasure of reading but that, frankly, he couldn't make head or tail of its drama. She gave it to me to read, and I told her, with equal candor, that it was the most sonorous vocabulary I had ever read but that I did not understand jot or title of what it was saying. With withering scorn, she said, 'I never expected to find that you were as stupid as Tom Eliot.' I thanked her for the only compliment she had ever given me."

_Andrea Weiss
Paris Was a Woman: Portraits from the Left Bank
(Excerpts taken from Chapter 4: City of Dark Nights, pp. 142-173)

The Gay Triangle in the Marais

2008-09-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

"Within a triangle whose points are formed by the Centre Georges-Pompidou, the Saint-Paul metro, and the Picasso Museum, Parisian homosexual life begins anew every evening."

_Frédéric Martel
The Pink and the Black: Homosexuals in France since 1968

Musée Picasso: 5 rue du Thorigny

We will start at Au Coeur Couronné, on rue de la Ferronnerie. "This street is a promise: it announces the Marais and leads us into it."

Leaving Les Halles and taking rue de la Reynie, then rue Saint-Merri, we arrive at Beaubourg.

The main artery of the Marais is rue Saint-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie.

We will continue down rue Saint-Croix and at the intersection of rue Vieille-du-Temple is the bookstore Les Mots à la Bouche.

Not far, at 49 rue Blancs-Manteaux was the gay piano bar Le Piano Zinc, which opened in 1981.

Today, Le Gai Moulin, at 10 rue Saint-Merri, revives the spirit of the original, Le Piano Zinc.

The tour will culminate with the new LGBT Center, at 63, rue Beaubourg.

Foucault and Queer Theory

2008-09-01T10:13:00.003-07:00

Tamsin Spargo

Questions to Think About:
- What do the terms ‘queer’ and ‘tolerance’ signify to you?
- How does homosexuality challenge our most basic assumptions of sexuality?
- Was the sexual revolution of the 1960’s the impetus for ‘freeing’ us sexually? What would Foucault think?
- What is constructivism? Essentialism?
- What are the problems with basing politics on identity?
- What are identity politics?
- If homosexuality is (as Foucault asserted) a cultural product, then, what is heterosexuality?
- And why is it viewed as the natural, normal sexuality?
 - How do we privilege heterosexuality in discussions about homosexuality?
- What is an identity? What is an essential identity?

Highlights from the reading:
“The realm of sexuality has its own internal politics, inequities and modes of oppression. As with other aspects of human behaviour, the concrete institutional forms of sexuality at any given time and place are products of human activity. They are imbued with conflicts of interest and political manoeuvring, both deliberate and incidental. In that sense, sex is always political. But there are also historical periods in which sexuality is more sharply contested and more overtly politicized. In such periods, the domain of erotic life is, in effect, renegotiated.” – Anthropologist Gayle Rubin (p. 5)

- What does Rubin mean when she says that 'sex is always political' in this quotation?
- Do you think we may, in fact, be in a historical period where sex is being renegotiated, as Rubin suggests?

Michel Foucault (1926-1984)
- Poststructuralist (philosopher)
- Focused on power/discourse
- A homosexual who died of AIDS 1984
- Point of departure for queer theory/theorists
- According to Foucault: sexuality is not a natural feature or fact of human life but a constructed category of experience which has historical, social and cultural, rather than biological origins (p. 12).
- Foucault was less concerned with what ‘sexuality’ is, than with how it functions in society (p. 13).
- ‘Truth’ is knowledge that exists within a particular discourse and is bound up with power (p. 15).
- ‘Power’ is a matter of complex relationships and not property inherent in certain classes or individuals
- According to Foucault, modern homosexuality is of recent origin. For him, homosexuality is a constructed category – not a discovered identity. (This does not mean that sexual relations between men and between women did not happen before this time period p. 17).
- In his words: “Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior and androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species.” (p. 20).
- Thus, homosexuality became pathologised as perverse and deviant (to be treated).

Queer Theory
- ‘Queer’ is defined as against the normative.
- Queer Theory: a collection of intellectual engagements with the relations between sex, gender and sexual desire.
- The view of ‘self’ shifts in queer theory: the individual is not seen as atomistic, or as a holder of objective knowledge or an essential identity. The self is a socially constructed fiction (p. 50).

Judith Butler
- Foucault’s analysis was almost exclusively male focused.
- She agrees with Foucault: sexuality is discursively produced and she also claims that gender is a product of culture.
- Gender, for Butler, is performance .“It is through the stylized repetition of particular bodily acts, gestures and movements that the effect of gender is created as ‘social temporality. We do not behave in certain ways because of our gender identity, we attain that identity through those behavioral patterns, which sustain gender norms’”(p. 53).
- We are, according to Butler, identities without essences, subjects in process.

PARIS

2008-08-28T01:36:00.001-07:00

We will be creating an interactive map of gay and lesbian Paris. To create this map, you will investigate and track (both geographically and temporally) the sexual landscape of 20th century Paris. You will add cites, anecdotes, photos and pertinent information to the maps that we will construct as a class.

Gay Paris Fall 2008

2008-08-28T00:56:00.001-07:00

Welcome to our course's blog.

On this site you will find links to the syllabus, all of your readings, reading guides, a forum to ask questions, and other useful links. This site will also be a tool we will use when creating our maps of Paris.

This course is meant to be interactive. This inherently means that I want your input. I am interested in what you want to learn, how you want to learn it and why. I would love this class to be one long discussion forum - a place where you tease out your ideas and employ them by adding to and challenging other people's thoughts.

This semester will be spent engaging with Paris. The city is a pivotal part of what we will learn and how we will learn it. It is the context for everything we will discuss, read and learn.