On January 19th, the night before Trump's inauguration, the theater community will band together for a show of solidarity in the form of The Ghostlight Project. Named after the light left on on a theater's stage when the auditorium is unoccupied, the protest will gather hundreds of groups in free-form events designed to express support for vulnerable communities targeted by the Trump administration.
Read More
Originally published in Vice on 10/23/16
We Talked to Christian Slater About Gay Porn, Man-Crushes, and 'King Cobra'
Despite what some early buzz suggested, director Justin Kelly avoided representing Kocis (Christian Slater) as a one-note sexual predator, and Slater's depiction of him is by far the best part of the film. And Clayton is a serviceable Corrigan, melding his boyish Nickelodeon charm with a hint of more adult mischievousness. Unfortunately, the rest lacks much in the way of nuance, particularly in the scenes between Kerekes (James Franco) and Cuadra (Keegan Allen), which are wooden and a bit boring. It probably isn't a coincidence that in a film featuring no out gay actors, there is an almost palpable lack of passion or sensuality.
Read More
A still from Alfa, the latest release from Naked Sword Film Works, out today. Photo courtesy Naked Sword
This Gay Porn Company Is Upending the Definition of Porn
NSFW may be the most prominent effort by a major gay porn industry player to date to blur the line between art film and pornography. Its productions mix erotic and often hardcore sex with funny, moody, and contemplative moments: Nova Dubai is a 50-minute meditation on gentrification, incest, and suicide in Brazil; Brontez Purnell describes his 100 Boyfriends Mixtape as "one hundred failed relationships condensed down into one;" and Hattie Goes Cruising is a documentary following Hank Major, a 70-year-old black gay man from Philadelphia, as he remembers a life of public sex.
Read More
The Orlando Shooter Was Born into America's Culture of Violence
hat we do know is that America still has some unsavory attitudes toward the LGBTQ community, even from the state level, and that we live in a very violent society—more than 33,000 Americans were killed in 2013 by guns, and the US leads high-income countries in the world in total firearm death rate. I sat down with Beverly Tillery, the executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP), to discuss how Mateen's acts fit into the broader pattern of anti-queer violence in America.
Read More
At 83, Chita Rivera Would Still Beat You in a Dance-Off
At eighty-three, Chita Rivera has had the kind of career longevity that no one who started off as a dancer could possibly expect. Along the way, she's picked up the Presidential Medal of Freedom and two Tony Awards. Oh, and she's also the first Latin@ to receive the Kennedy Center Honors.
Read More
Hillary's Tortured Relationship with LGBTs
For the first time in history, Democrats have fielded two credible primary candidates who are willing to admit publicly that same-sex marriage should be legal; that firing people simply for being transgender should be illegal; and that so-called "religious freedom acts" should not be used to create a backdoor to discrimination. One has a long and checkered history to examine; the other comes with less baggage (and fewer successes) to take into account. It's like living in a town with one gay bar—when a new one opens shop, you suddenly have to decide how you felt about the original one all along. When it comes to Hillary, activists, policy makers, and pol-watchers across the queer left are sharply divided around the question.
Read MoreThe Controversial Chinese Gay Erotic Novel You Can Finally Read in English
On September 22, 1998, the first installment of a gay erotic novel appeared on the now-defunct website Chinese Men's and Boys' Paradise (Zhongguo nanren nanhai tiantang). The book—originally called Dalu gushi (A Story From the Mainland)—quickly gained cult fame in China's gay community. It was one of (if not the) first self-reflexively gay novels to be published in any form in mainland China, as well as the first Chinese novel to be written natively on the Internet. This month, thanks to the Feminist Press, it is about to be published for the first time in English, under the title Beijing Comrades. Yet to this day, the true author—variously referred to as Bei Tong, Miss Wang, Beijing Comrade, Ling-Hui, and Xiao He—remains a mystery.
Read More
Originally published on the Vice blog BROADLY. Read the original here. (Image via the Happy Birthday Marsha IndieGogo page.)
'Happy Birthday Marsha' Shows What the Gay Rights Movement Owes Trans People
So this story seeks to intervene on the idea that we have to be respectable in order to matter. We have to be white, or be outside of prison, or have a certain type of class access. Because we historically have seen, time and time again, that people who are navigating huge forms of violence have been consistently doing powerful acts of self-determination. I think it's really important to remember our history and how the past isn't past: It's actually playing out right now. If we're not talking about people in prison while we're talking about trans people, we're not talking about trans people.
Read More