It's delightful, it's delicious, it's dlevy!
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Got my meningitis vaccine this morning. Took just a few minutes and cost nothing. Gay men in NYC, don’t wait to do this. Meningitis is a horrible disease that can be passed through casual contact — you don’t need to be having anonymous sex to get it. In the NY Times piece about the outbreak, someone is quoted as saying that each immunization saves four people, so you’re not just helping yourself, you’re doing your part for the greater good.
The city has free immunization clinics in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens.
I saw Hit The Wall at the Barrow Street Theatre last night, despite having heard from several people that the show wasn’t very good. Maybe the combination of cheap tickets and low expectations did their magic, but I was taken with the show.
The show works on a lot of levels. First and foremost, it tells a story worth telling, and it tells that story powerfully. It manages to successfully tell the story of an event that doesn’t rely on any one character’s arc or journey, enabling an excellent ensemble of actors all to shine. And a black playwright tells the story that foregrounds queer people of color without letting a mostly white, affluent audience off the hook by providing someone more like them to be their “entrance” into the play. (Yes, there are white characters, gay and straight, but none of them is allowed to become the window for the audience, and that is a good thing.)
There are some aspects of the play’s dramaturgy that didn’t quite work for me. It starts fairly naturalistic, so by the time more stylized theatrical flourishes enter the play, they are a bit jarring. And it’s hard to really get a sense of the menace of the riots when there’s only one actor playing a cop present. But sitting in the front row with nothing between me and the actors, there were times I was nervous the rioting was going to actually end up in my lap, which certainly added to the experience.
The audio clip above is from the play’s opening scene, in which a black drag queen character responds to harassment from a pair of younger black and latino men. “Look upon me,” she says. “Behold.” This play is all about forcing ourselves to look upon members of our society we are often uncomfortable looking at, members of the queer tapestry that the mainstream gay movement would rather forget about. Yes, it’s about acknowledging the crucial role that drag queens and genderqueer people and poor gay men of color played in launching the gay liberation movement that so quickly left them behind. But it’s also about reminding ourselves of the humanity and inherent worth of individuals, whether they launched a movement or simply tried to live their lives. And it’s also about theater that feels dangerous because it simultaneously seizes your emotions while challenging you to examine yourself. And if that’s not good theater, I don’t know what is.
I couldn’t be more proud to be part of Keshet as we announce the publication of the world’s first English-language Jewish children’s book with LGBT characters, THE PURIM SUPERHERO. Order one for everyone you know, just in time for Purim! Thanks to Kar-Ben Publishing for being a partner in this endeavor.
I just excused myself from a group lunch because of a bunch of things one person said. And I was enough of a dumbass to say, “I’ve got to go do something.”
Way to make it vague and formless, Erica. You’re trained in what, again?
Now, any major dude will tell you that there are many different…
So, um, I know you’re in the middle of your own process and I don’t want to derail or anything, because his misogyny is inexcusable, but “these guys are why straight people are homophobic” is some fucked up victim-blaming bullshit.
Real liberation makes room for all kinds of gays (and straights), including the kinds that make us uncomfortable. And that’s a hard place to get to, but it’s one worth fighting for. I occasionally reblog this quote from Michael Warner as a reminder of that.
For those of us of a certain age, Sally Ride was *the* feminist icon, the first and brightest star introduced to elementary school children in the curriculum of girls can do anything… *even science*!
So I was sad to learn she died today.
And then when people on Twitter started to talk about Sally being gay, I got angry.
How did I made it to 34 years old and not know this? I was furious at the presumed erasure of her identity that happened during my education.
It turns out that when I was in elementary school, Sally Ride was still married to a man. She later divorced him and spent the following 27 years with a female partner.
In life, Sally was intensely private, both before and after coming out. She really only used her celebrity to advance the cause of girls in science.
That makes me sad and furious too. NOT SAD WITH HER. NOT FURIOUS AT HER. But sad and furious at the conditions of the world we live in where she felt a need for the kind of intense privacy that prevented us from learning basic biographical data about her that could have made a huge difference in the lives of many, many queer kids.
A year and a half ago I caused a minor shitstorm for expressing the same sense of anger and regret at the passing of another lesbian icon who, like Ride, was intensely private, and while not exactly closeted in her day to day life, carefully kept mention of her lesbian identity out of the popular narrative about her life. People thought I was criticizing her or calling her a closet case. And the fact that we can’t separate a critique of the societal forces that create an atmosphere where this discussion is even happening from a critique of the victims (yes, victims) of that society also infuriate and sadden me.
But now that she has posthumously come out, I hope (as I did with the previous icon) that this can become part of her story, and we can adopt her not only as a pioneering woman but also as a pioneering queer person, and as my people say, may her memory be for a blessing.
As I mentioned earlier this week, I was invited to give the sermon this Shabbat at Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, MA for their Pride Shabbat. If you’d like to read what I had to say, it’s behind the cut.
…and it’s not too late to contribute!
If you’re outraged over the North Carolina vote, you can take action. Instead of writing off the people of this state who need support more than ever, help keep the institutions of the LGBTQ community strong when they’re needed more than ever. Your gift to the lgbt Center of Raleigh at any level will send a message that the LGBTQ residents of NC have the rest of us behind them.
