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Editor's Note: Bo Young
plitting Circles, Blurring Lines and Engendering Discussion
Poetry: Hindu sources
Gender & Sexual Identities Within American Indian Tribal Spaces Wesley Thomas
Between The Worlds: An Investigation Of Western Third Gender Ingrid Sell
My Life As An Intersex Berdache Paul
The Sexual Complex Timothy J. Leary
Gender: Types & Images John Steczynski
Questions of Gay Gender & Culture Don Dimock
A Sexual Stockholm Syndrome Bo Young
Back Into The Future: Transphobia Is My Issue Too
Warren J. BlumenfeldWhen I Was Born Andrew Ramer
A Fictional Reality Mountaine
Phrases from the Daisy-Chain Harry Hay
Bodhisattva Watch: The Three Wonders
It is said there are Three Wonders of the Bodhisattva to meditate upon. The first is that the Bodhisattva is simultaneously male and female, transcending the polarities, like the Two-Spirit persons of Native-American (and pop gay) lore. Sometimes Avalokiteshvara is portrayed icongraphically as male on the right side of the body and female on the left.
The second wonder is that from the Bodhisattva's perspective there is no distinction between life and release-from-life, between samsara and Nirvana no ascertainable difference: time and eternity are one. In the jargon of the New Age: "This is IT,"no difference between now and life-after-death, no distinction between the longing for God and the experience of living life, no goal to achieve.
And the third wonder is that the first two are the same.
Joseph Campbell: Out of the Garden
Male and female, life and death, good and evil: problems of opposites.
The first man and woman told God what happened, and that ran the usual way: the man blamed the woman, and the woman blamed the snake. God then cursed the lot of them in increasing degrees. Man got it fairly easy: all he had to do was to work and sweat. The woman had to bring forth children in pain, and the serpent had to crawl on his belly for the rest of his life. God kicked them out of the Garden and put at the gate two cherubim, door guardians, with a flaming sword between them. And that's the explanation of why we're out here in the cold and not in the Garden.
Scared Straight by Robert N. Minor Toby Johnson
Negative Thoughts by A.A. Bronson Bruce Grether
Getting Life In Perspective by Toby Johnson Wil Biggers
The Black & White Book by R.P. Moore Toby Johnson
Journeys Across the Rainbow by Dale Colclasure & David Jensen, editors Toby Johnson
It's All God by Walter Starcke Ralph Walker
Spiritual Direction and the Gay Person by James Empereur, S.J. Toby Johnson
Gay Tantra by William Schindler Bruce Grether
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar
the 1995 movie, tells the highly mythologized story of three outlandish drag queens who get stuck for a weekend in a small town in rural middle America while waiting for a part to fix the '60s Cadillac convertible they're driving cross-country in to attend a Hollywood drag festival. Because of their awareness of the oppressiveness of gender roles and their sensitivity to other people's needs and their lighthearted truthfulness, they transform the town: a mentally ill woman is healed, a stutterer gets his voice, a battered woman redeems her marriage, racial boundaries drop, even the surly macho teenage punks turn into polite gentlemen. It's all over the top; the miracles are too easy, the transformations too sweeping and unrealistic, besides no one could possibly travel with that many costume changes (especially the wigs and outfits specifically for sleeping in). But the message is clear: transcending and abrogating gender roles alleviates suffering and oppression. And gay men are the cultural symbol for that transformation. The punch line (Stockard Channing to Patrick Swayze) goes: "I don't think of you as a man or as a woman. I think of you as an angel." And Swayze's response: "That's healthy."
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Last update September 21, 2001
