VICE: How to Have Gay Sex Without Being Gay (Aug 9 2015)

Each chapter in the book explores a different framing device that our culture uses to understand sex between straight white men: frat house or military hazing rituals, boys-will-be-boys summer camp circle jerks, or the "situational homosexuality" of sailors at sea, for instance. Women, Ward contends, are allowed (or, increasingly, expected) to be more sexually fluid and "open," while the concept of the "down low" has prompted many recent discussions on the supposed sexual fluidity (and duplicity) of men of color. But straight white men are generally held up as the paragons of our sexually normative culture, oriented in one rigid direction, unwavering and in fact disgusted by any other kind of sexuality.

In particular, Ward pays close attention to the ways in which white straight men justify their own sexual behaviors with other men. She neatly breaks down common defenses given to "explain" such actions. For example, sexual contact between men is often seen as a kind of heterosexual bonding if the participants loudly declare how disgusting the activity is (think frat boys "forced" to insert things into each others' assholes—a frequent occurrence in the pages of Not Gay). Yet she points out that many straight men openly express disgust about women's bodies, showing that disgust and desire can easily exist in the same moment. [...]

There's a great book written by this historian George Chauncey about precisely that. It's called Gay New York. I remember very clearly excerpts in it from an interview with a gay man who says, "It was really a bummer when the gay liberation movement started pushing people to come out because it meant that straight men were far less willing to have sex with us." All of a sudden, there are all of these identitarian consequences.

 

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The Conversation: What ‘walkies’ says about your relationship with your dog

In many ways, the walk reflects the historical social order of human domination and animal submission. But research suggests that it also allows humans and dogs to negotiate their power within the relationship. In fact, our recent study found that the daily dog walk involves complex negotiation at almost every stage.

The UK, like many countries, is a nation of pet lovers – 40% of UK households are home to a domestic animal. And for dog owners (24% of UK households) that means a lot of walking. Dog “owners” walk 23,739 miles during an average dog’s lifetime of 12.8 years and reportedly get more exercise from walking their dogs than the average gym goer. Despite this, we actually know very little about how walking and the spaces in which we walk help forge our relationships with dogs. [...]

But dog owners also adapt the timing, length and location of the walks depending on the perceived personality of the dog and what they think the dogs like and dislike the most. One respondent felt that as her dog had been rescued she had a “right” to a good life and giving her a long walk daily was part of this care-giving. There was also the sense that people knew where their dogs liked to walk and walkers spoke of “their stomping ground” and “favourite park”, suggesting that over time, dogs and their companions find spaces that work for them as a partnership or team. [...]

Third parties also influence the nature of the walk. A popular image of dog walkers sees them out and about, chatting with other walkers, their dogs engaging in similar “conversations”. But the social nature of the walk is certainly not a given. Many people simply do not want to socialise with other humans (or their dogs); and some believe their walk would be easier and less stressful if their route was human and dog-free. Participants who had busy lives wanted to get the walk done without distraction. Another respondent, who walked a large pack of dogs, recognised that this would be intimidating for others, so preferred to find quiet places for walks to allow the dogs the freedom to run uninterrupted.

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Politico: Bring back the draft. No, really.

f Sweden reinstitutes the draft, as it is expected to do within a couple of months, many will report the move as a return to a previous era. For centuries, young men in Europe were conscripted for military service to protect countries from invasion. Then came the 1990s and the presumed end of history. With territorial wars considered a thing of the past, large European powers scrapped compulsory military service in favor of smaller professional armed forces.

The return to conscription is both a sign of more uncertain times and the result of difficulties Sweden has had in filling its military roster with only volunteer forces. But it would be a mistake to write off the effort as a rollback of progress. Sweden’s initiative will show the draft in its modern incarnation: targeted, highly selective, and applied to both men and women. [...]

In Sweden, the annual number of conscripts will gradually grow from next year’s 4,000 to 6,000 by 2021. With some 90,000 Swedes born each year, that means only 4.4 percent of Swedish 19-year-olds will be drafted next year. Even when the draft reaches 6,000 conscripts each year, that’s an acceptance rate of less than seven percent. [...]

Indeed, the modern military employs sophisticated equipment that should not be entrusted to youngsters who’d much rather be somewhere else. “When I did my military service everybody had to serve, and if you were less able you worked in support functions like postman,” recalled Eksell. “The selective draft will help us move from military service as something you’re forced to do to something you’re selected to do.”

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Jacobin Magazine: The Politics of Nostalgia

Throughout the advanced capitalist world and beyond, a xenophobic, nostalgic nationalism is taking shape. A flock of old and new leaders are rising up, declaring that our best days are behind us and that they are the most qualified to build a better yesterday. Forget about the future, they say, the past is now the place to be — but not everyone is invited. [...]

Around the world — from Britain to Turkey to the Philippines — we see variants of the same theme: a nostalgic fervor for a proud past, coupled with a hostility toward “outsiders.” Imaginations of this past differ depending on the nation but, ultimately, they amount to the same thing: a phantom homeland with a strong sense of belonging. [...]

Only through the marginalization of others — foreigners, immigrants, LGBTQ people, all those who “don’t belong” — can the reactionary nostalgists turn their remembered past into a site of empowerment. To turn back the clock, others must be turned out. With little else to latch on to, excluding others makes their past feel all the more precious, a thing that can truly be claimed as their own.

This is the dark irony beneath the nativist’s angry refrain to the immigrant “Go back to where you came from”: it is the xenophobe who, more than anyone, wants to go back to where they came from — to an imagined, pure point of origin, a moment in history where their country was a homogenous mass. The racist, like all great nostalgists, is homesick for a home they never had.

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The New York Review of Books: Embracing the Vulgar

What is vulgar? These days a certain president-elect comes to mind. But there’s more to it than the gilded rooms at Mar-a-Lago. The word’s many meanings and many forms are at the heart of “The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined,” an expansive exhibition at the Barbican Centre in London. The show takes shape around eleven categories of vulgarity conceived by writer and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, like “Puritan,” “Impossible Ambition,” and “Showing Off.” Each is explored through clothing, shoes, and texts spanning the eighteenth century through the present.

At first glance, several of these items are not obviously vulgar—a prim twentieth-century Christian Dior cocktail dress, for example—while others flaunt their vulgarity with bedazzled, slinky, excessive fervor. But to call something vulgar may say more about oneself than the thing in question, Phillips argues. One employs the word, he writes, to “reassure oneself of one’s own good taste” and to reaffirm “the fact that there is such a thing as good taste, and that it protects us.” [...]

Though not explicitly included as one of the exhibition’s organizing categories, pleasure is a central theme. We see this in Vivienne Westwood’s playful “Eve” bodysuit, adorned only with a gleaming mirrored leaf affixed to the crotch, and her “Watteau” evening gown, displayed with a white leather glove poised to slip off the mannequin’s arm at any moment. The play on Genesis and the subversion of opulent eighteenth-century dress both sit just on the edge of propriety—they are just an apple’s bite or a glove’s drop away from the overt, vulgar display of money or sex.

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