Feb 11, 2017

The Phallic Art of sub-Saharan Africa


If you're interested in African or African-American men, you should take a look at the traditional art of sub-Saharan Africa.  There are hundreds of cultural groups with a variety of artistic styles, but they have one thing in common:












An appreciation of the penis.

The male bodies are usually stylized, with little of the anatomical precision of European nudes, but the penis is always big, blatant, the focal point of the piece.












The Fon, the traditional leader of the grasslands of Cameroun, is apparently chosen based on his monumental phallus.
















The Magbetu people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are known for their elongated heads, traditional cannibalism, and elongated penises.
















A terracotta figure, with an unusual penis -- gigantic, but not aroused -- from the Nok culture that flourished in Nigeria between 1500 BC and 500 AD.

More after the break.














Feb 10, 2017

50 States, 50 Naked Men, Part 1

I've been to 48 of the 50 U.S. states, and met men in most of them.  Here are my favorite naked men in each state (guys I've seen naked, not including locker rooms, bathhouses, bear parties, and boyfriends).  They have to actually be living in the state, not tourists.

Midwest

 1. Illinois.  Tough call, since I grew up in Rock Island and went to college there.  But I'm going to go with Dylan, the 28-year old retro twink met in 2015.  He acted like it was still 1985.

2.  Indiana.  Another tough call: visits to relatives twice a year, graduate school at Indiana University, visiting my parents in Indianapolis.  I'm going to go with Tyler, the "son" of my first boyfriend Fred, who I met in 2012.  He was actually the son of Fred's housemate, but I still got a weird family vibe.

3. Iowa.  Davenport, Iowa was right across the river from Rock Island.  Plus I've been to Des Moines several times.  But my favorite hookup was with a 48-hour long date with Sammy, the son of my old speech teacher Mr. Blowfish, a Swedish-Vietnamese art history professor who took me on a 36 hour date in Cornell, Iowa.

5. Minnesota.  At a conference in St. Peter, Minnesota, I picked up a Vietnamese undergrad at an art gallery, but ended up on a date with his gym rat cousin.

6. Nebraska.  In 1980 my boyfriend Fred and I moved to Omaha for a terrible month.  He brought home Mike, a teenager from his youth group at church.  Years later I tried to find Mike again.  He had died, but I found out from his nephew that he kept a picture from that night all his life.

8. Wisconsin.  We lived in Racine, Wisconsin from Kindergarten through second grade, but of course I was too young for sausage sightings.   I didn't meet anyone in Wisconsin until January 2014, when I went to Milwaukee for a post-Christmas vacation, and picked up Superman.



Northeast

9. Connecticut.  When I was living on Long Island, my first year in grad school, I went out on a date with a guy who lived in Greenwich, Connecticut, three hours away by train.  I spent the night, and the next day he gave me the wrong directions, so I had to spend 2 hours standing on a train platform.

10. Maine.  In 2010, my boyfriend Troy and I went to the gay resort town of Ogunquit, Maine.  I don't care much for resorts, but we did manage to pick up a guy on the beach.

11. New Hampshire.  Drove through, but didn't stop.

12. Rhode Island.  In 2000, Yuri and I visited my friend Zack, who was studying at the Rhode Island School of Design.

13. Vermont. On the way back from Maine in 2010, Troy and I stayed overnight in Burlington, Vermont, and hooked up with an undergrad French major at Middlebury College.




Middle Atlantic States

14. Delaware.  I've only been here once, when Jermaine, the Biggest Guy on My Sausage List, took me to Bowers Beach for his uncle's 50th birthday party.

15. Maryland.
  November 2016: Three guys in my bed in Baltimore, each more hung than the last.

16. New Jersey.  
When I lived in New York, one night I broke every rule of gay cruising and ended up in the house of a cute Hispanic guy, with his parents in the next room, somewhere in New Jersey.



Southeast

20. Florida.  I lived in Wilton Manors for 4 years, but my most memorable hookup was probably when David and I drove down to Key West, and picked up the hitchhiker.

The full list, with nude photos and sexual situations, is on Tales of West Hollywood.

Feb 6, 2017

Looking for a Hula Girl: Erasing Gay People from Ebay


If you want to see just how thoroughly gay people are erased from the world, do some online shopping:

Allposters.com suggests that "men" will like posters of female breasts (labeled “Goals”), and women lowering their panties and asking us to “Lend a hand.”

A total of 25% of the 274 posters for men and 36% of the 131 posters for women assert that only heterosexuals exist.

Calendars.com offers The Boyfriend of the Month, featuring “that perfect guy that anyone would consider a great catch!"  So far so good.

But there's also a a Chippendales Calendar, “a must have for every female!”
The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Calendar is “a favorite with men around the world!”

At Gifts.com, the category For Him offered lots of gifts for straight weddings and anniversaries, personalized His N Her Pillow Cases, a “Weekend of Love Kit” with an image of a man and woman from the Kama Sutra, and “Life Lesson Figurines,” about men getting into humorous scrapes that assume hetero-coupling: “Just because you like it, doesn’t mean she will”; “When she asks for a backrub, sometimes she just means a backrub.”

 Amazon.com, the mega book and everything else site, wins the award for the most egregious insistence that gay people do not exist.

The introduction to the Boyfriends/Husbands Gift category amply references the “white knight” who has “swept her off her feet.”
The introduction to the Girlfriends/Wives category rhapsodizes about the “woman in his life,” with never a same-sex partner acknowledged or implied.

Ebay, the online auction giant, displays the least erasure of any of the websites I observed, perhaps because the item descriptions are not written by homophobic advertising agencies.

Orlando Bloom, star of The Lord of the Rings and The Pirates of the Caribbean series (left), appears on 728 items up for auction, but less than 10 asserted that no gay men exist: a photo “for the ladies”; a Pirates of the Caribbean t-shirt that is “perfect for guys -- no picture of Orlando Bloom on the front!”; a poster of a shirt-less Bloom reclining on a large white pillow (“Great poster, ladies!).

192 auctions offer items emblazoned with the likeness of Zac Efron, the star of Hairspray and the popular High School Musical franchise (top photo). There are posters, photos, articles of clothing, school supplies, pillowcases, and even light switch covers. But only four of item descriptions specify that all potential bidders, and all potential recipients, must be girls. The others exclaimed: “Everybody’s favorite teen hunk!”, or “A great addition to any fan’s collection!"

Still, it wasn’t hard to find erasure:
A dart board emblazoned with a picture of a male model, advertised as “Ladies, here is your dart board!"
A mug showing ladies in a state of undress “for the men!”
Euphoria Cologne, to “attract the opposite sex!”
A photo of Taylor Lautner  “for the ladies.”




A T-shirt emblazoned with “Got boys?” in a parody of the popular “Got milk?” ads, “tailored for the ladies!”
A fishing lure in the form of a mermaid, “Guaranteed to catch all fishermen!”
A Hawaiian hula boy bobbler for a car’s dashboard, “looking for a hula girl.”
A "dainty" pink tool set, "for women only"

And my favorite: a selection of action-adventure DVDs for men to watch "while your wife is out shopping."  You could also get a chick-flick set for women to watch "while your husband is out hunting."

Me kill saber-toothed tiger, you cook!

5 Cartoon Couples That You Thought Were Gay, But Probably Aren't

I'm all for subtexts. This blog is about finding gay connections in texts where the writer, director, and fans are all yelling "No, no, no!"  And I've found them in dozens of children's tv shows, from The Flintstones in the 1960s to Adventure Time today.

It's easier to find them in juvenile media, where the heterosexist mandate of ending every story with a boy-girl kiss is not so aggressively policed.  All you need is:

Two characters of the same sex who display little or no heterosexual interest, and have a passionate, intense, exclusive relationship.

Some character pairs have been bandied around for years as emblems of gay subtexts, but unfortunately, they just don't cut it:

1. Batman and Robin (Adam West, Burt Ward) from the 1960s tv series. The Dynamic Duo may have been domestic partners in the 1940s comic books, but by the 1960s they were presented as a heterosexual father and his heterosexual adopted son.

Lack of hetero interest: No
Exclusive: Yes
Passionate, intense: No

It was still fun to watch Robin being a "damsel in distress," threatened by the villain and rescued by "my hero" Batman.

Especially in the first season, before they censored Robin's skin-tight briefs.


2. Shaggy and Scooby, Scooby-Doo.  You already know what they look like, so here's Robbie Amell as Fred in Scooby-Doo!  Curse of the Lake Monster (2010).

Scooby-Doo is multi-generational cartoon/movie series about four teenagers and their semi-sentient dog (the titular Scooby-Doo) who solve paranormal mysteries.  The beatnik Shaggy and Scooby often go off exploring on their own, and jump into each other's arms.  But come on -- it's a guy and a semi-sentient dog!

Lack of hetero interest: Yes
Passionate, intense: No
Exclusive: No.  They're part of a group.


3. Bert and Ernie, Sesame Street.  This one gets a lot of play, including a petition to have the two get married on the air.

But have you actually watched this show?  Ernie is Bert's annoying, tag-along little brother.  Of course they love each other, but there is no passion in their relationship.  And I don't even think that they live together; they are too young.  There must be a parent off-camera somewhere.

Lack of hetero interest: Yes
Passionate, intense: No
Exclusive: Yes

4. Peppermint Patty and Marcie of the comic strip Peanuts have often been envisioned as a lesbian couple (here on a episode of Family Guy).  But in the strip, they are portrayed as heterosexual friends.  Each has a crush on Charlie Brown, as well as other more fleeting heterosexual romances.  And their interactions are neither passionate nor intense.  The only hug I can remember occurs when Marcie's mother makes Patty a skating outfit.

Lack of hetero interest: No
Passionate, intense: No
Exclusive: Yes








5. Bart and Milhouse, The Simpsons, shown here as adults, after Milhouse bulks up.  Certainly the two are inseparable buddies, and Milhouse has many gender-atypical traits.  He's even characterized in his permanent record with the antiquated phrase "homosexual tendencies."  But he has a major crush on Lisa, and Bart has had any number of girlfriends.


Lack of hetero interest: No
Passionate, intense: No
Exclusive: Yes

But don't worry, there are still dozens of juvenile media characters for whom the gay subtexts ring loud and clear.  Let's start with Spongebob Squarepants and Patrick.

Feb 5, 2017

How to Survive a Football Game

No matter how you guard against it, if you live in the United States, sooner or later you will be forced to watch a football game.

It's a national obsession, especially among heterosexual men.  It's all they think of from August through February, and they believe that it's all you think of, too.  So you will be interrogated on favorite teams, favorite players, favorite plays, asked how the game went last night, and invited to watch.

Of course, there are reasons you may want to hang out with guys who watch football.  They tend to be more muscular than your run-of-the-mill straight guy, and they like hugging and grabbing each other at every point.

The snacks are good, too.




If you go to or watch all of the available football games played from August to February, you will devote 12 hours a day, every day, to The Game.  No one can do all of that, so straight guys usually confine themselves to one game per day, and read the newspaper or watch ESPN to find out the other scores, so they can discuss them incessantly with their friends.

1. Professional football is played by members of the NFL (National Football League), which is divided into two conference of 16 teams each.  Each team will play 24 games during the season, plus a playoff to decide who is best in each conference.

That's a lot of games, but don't despair. You just need to memorize who won in the last few games played by teams from cities in your state (or, to be on the safe side, adjoining states).  Unfortunately, the two conferences aren't divided by geography, so you'll just have to scan to find them.

For instance, when I lived in Dayton, masquerading as heterosexual only required me to know about the Cincinnati Bengals, the Cleveland Browns, and maybe, to be on the safe side, the Indianapolis Colts.  Now I live on the Plains, so all I have to know about are the Minnesota Vikings, and to be on the safe side, the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears.

Memorize the names of the some of main players -- called quarterbacks -- so you can ask "How did ___ do last night?"  For the Minnesota Vikings, that's Teddy Bridgewater and Christian Pounder.

The Superbowl, in January or February, is the big event of the year, with the best teams of the two conferences squaring off.  You should know who won for the last five years: Seattle Seahawks, Baltimore Ravens, New York Giants, Green Bay Packers, New Orleans Saints.

2. You should also know something about college football.  Colleges are divided into four Divisions by the National College Athletic Association (NCAA).  You only have to know about Division 1, the 128 biggest colleges, which is divided into 11 Conferences.  Unfortunately, they're not divided by geography, either, so figure out the ones that are closest to you (in Minnesota, the Golden Gophers).

You also might want to know about the Big Ten, which actually has 15 members: Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan State, Minnesota, and so on.

Be careful around Christmastime: that's when the various conferences decide which team is better at "bowl" tournaments, and there are dozens of them, most with silly commercial names: The Hyundai Sun Bowl, the AutoZone Liberty Bowl, the Chick-fil-a Peach Bowl, etc.



Straight guys will be following all of them, but the only you really need to know about is the Rose Bowl (January 1st), in which the Big Ten and the Pacific-12 conferences pair off.

3. If you're ready for the advanced stuff, try showing off your knowledge of high school football!  They are divided up into divisions and ranks, too.

Rock Island High School, my alma mater, is nationally ranked at 7120 and state ranked at 217.  It's in the Western Big Six.

Do you have a headache yet?



Think of it this way: all of the statistics, rankings, divisions, and conferences boil down to a group of extremely muscular men piling up on each other, grabbing each other's butts, adjusting their crotches, and then getting naked in the locker room.

Almost makes it all worthwhile.

See also: Hating Sports.



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