Since it was founded in 1781, New Orleans has marched to the beat of its own drum. For two centuries, those in control of the Louisiana state government have tried in vain to impose their prejudices on a city that is French, Spanish, Creole, African, Catholic, pagan and very gay (in both senses of the word). If nothing else, New Orleans knows how to throw a party, from the world-famous Mardi Gras to other, more specialized celebrations.
One of these celebrations began quite inauspiciously in August of 1972, by a group of friends living in a ramshackle cottage house at 2110 Barracks Street in the Treme section of New Orleans, just outside of the French Quarter. 
It was in desperate need of repair, and the rent was $100 per month. At any given time the residents numbered anywhere from six to ten, and it was still sometimes difficult to come up with the rent.
The large bathroom became a natural gathering place in the house. It had no shower, only a clawfoot tub, but it also had a sofa. With from six to ten residents, and one bathtub, everyone became close friends. While one soaked in the tub, another would recline on the couch and read A Streetcar Named Desire
And so it was, on a sultry August afternoon in 1972, that this band of friends decided to plan an amusement. According to author James T. Spears, writing in Rebels, Rubyfruit and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South
The following year the group decided to throw another Southern Decadence Party. 
They met at Matassa’s bar in the French Quarter to show off their costumes, then they walked back to “Belle Reve.” This first “parade” included only about 15 people impersonating such “decadent Southern” icons as Belle Watling, Mary Ann Mobley, Tallulah Bankhead, Helen Keller, and New Orleans’ own Ruthie the Duck Lady. This impromptu parade through the French Quarter and along Esplanade Avenue laid the groundwork for future events, and the group decided to repeat the party again the following year.
In 1974, the Southern Decadence visionaries named Frederick Wright as the first Grand Marshal, hoping to provide at least a modicum of order. For the next six years, the format of the celebration changed little. The founding group continued to appoint each year’s Grand Marshal by consensus. Some were gay, some were not. But all were members of the founding group. 
By 1981, most of the original organizers had moved on with their lives. Many felt that the event had become so big that it was no longer the intimate party they had started nine years earlier. Of the original group, only Grand Marshal V Robert King was actively participating. He, along with some of his friends that hung out at the Golden Lantern bar, thought it was worth continuing and they took over the festivities. It was at this point that Southern Decadence became primarily a gay event. Other protocol changes made in 1981 included moving the starting point of the annual parade from Matassa’s to the Golden Lantern bar, and allowing Grand Marshals to personally name their own successors. Both of these traditions continue today. And in 1987, the Grand Marshal began to make a proclamation of the official theme, color and song. 
Because the 2005 celebration was cancelled due to Hurricane Katrina, Southern Decadence 2005 Grand Marshals Lisa Beaumann and Regina Adams reigned for both 2005 and 2006, making the very first time in Southern Decadence history that grand marshals
ruled for two years. And keeping with the unpredictability of Decadence, the Grand Marshals from 2008 reigned once again in 2009.
The rest, as they say, is history. What began as a little costume party is now a world-famous gay celebration. In the 39th year, it has mushroomed from a small gathering of friends to a Labor Day weekend tradition, attracting over 100,000 participants, predominantly gay and lesbian, and generating almost $100 million in tourist revenue. This annual economic impact ranks it among the city’s top five most significant tourist events. The mayor has even welcomed the event with an Official Proclamation. 
Described by one reporter as “a happening of haberdashery fit for an LSD Alice in Wonderland,” Southern Decadence 2010 will be as outrageous as ever and live up to its reputation as New Orleans’ largest gay street fair. It all begins in earnest six weeks before Labor Day. However, the real party starts on the Wednesday before Labor Day, and the events are non-stop. It picks up steam daily as it nears Sunday’s big street parade, which rivals New Orleans’ gay Mardi Gras in scope, with the party lasting well into the day on Monday.
If you’ve never been to Southern Decadence, and sadly I haven’t, here are some tips to know before you go. What follows are some thoughts gathered from locals that will help you get the most out of your experience.
Pass by the NO/AIDS Task Force’s information tables located on the St. Ann Street sidewalk in front of Hit Parade Gift and Clothing, at the corner of Bourbon and St. Ann Streets. You’ll find lots of community information and details of the weekend’s events. The literature racks inside of Hit Parade are another great source for all of the Southern Decadence information that you will need.
During Southern Decadence, some streets of the French Quarter do not allow parking – look for, and heed, no parking signs. Plan on doing a lot of walking. Comfortable shoes are a must. Always walk where it is well lit and there are a lot of people. New Orleans is a city of neighborhoods. 
Like all large cities, the Big Easy does have some trouble spots. Always walk with others, never alone if possible. Don’t wander about the city. In New Orleans the neighborhoods can change, literally, when you cross a street. Always carry a map. If you’re drinking, don’t go stumbling about the French Quarter. Locals know that the people who encounter trouble are usually the ones who have been drinking.
And a bit of urban common sense is in order. When you walk the streets, don’t bring your wallet. Take the cash you need and possibly a credit card, along with some sort of identification, and put them in a pocket that no one can slip their hand into. Don’t wear expensive jewelry. Basically, don’t take anything with you that you would have a hard time replacing if it were lost.
If your car is impounded, it will cost you over $100 plus whatever else the city decides to tack on. Your car can be retrieved from the City Auto Pound, located in a dangerous area of the city, 400 N. Claiborne Ave., (504.565.7236). This will spoil a good time. Cabs are not difficult to get during Southern Decadence. If you are going to take a cab, try UNITED CABS: 504.522.9771 or 504.524.9606. Write these numbers down and put them in your wallet. This cab company can be trusted. United Cabs has a sound reputation with the New Orleans gay community. 
People are allowed to drink on the streets in New Orleans — that large 24-oz Southern Decadence cup that you’ll see people walking with and drinking from likely contains several shots of alcohol! However, if your drink isn’t already in a plastic cup, please ask for one before leaving your favorite watering hole. Glass and cans are not allowed on the streets for safety reasons.
Most bars in New Orleans are open twenty-four hours a day. Pace yourself. Most important, it’s easy to get caught up in all the excitement and forget to eat. If you want to make it through the weekend, solid food is a necessity. Of course, New Orleans is world famous for its food and indulging is part of a complete New Orleans experience.
Clean bathrooms can be difficult to find during Southern Decadence. Most businesses close their facilities to everyone but paying customers. If your hotel is far from the action, take care of the more important business before you hit the streets. If you need to, plan on buying lunch or dinner and using the restaurant’s bathroom before you pay the check! 
The French Quarter is an historic neighborhood. Please respect it. No matter how “bad” you have to go, do not urinate in the streets or on door steps or through iron gates. This is a good way to end up in central lock-up, and people who are arrested sit in jail until the courts re-open after Labor Day. It will cost you about $200. And it’s not polite. Listen to your body. Get in line before you really have to go. By the time you’re crossing your legs, you might be at the front of the line.
During Southern Decadence weekend, you’re guaranteed to get an eyeful of great costumes and fabulous bodies. Officially, public nudity is not allowed and there are obscenity laws on the books. Better judgment should be the rule of the day.
Southern Decadence is a BIG non-stop party. People drink and are having a good time. It’s easy to forget that there is a real world out there. Free condoms are available from the NO/AIDS Task Force station located near the Bourbon Pub / Parade. Don’t allow the party to overwhelm your better judgment. We want you to come again. Have fun and play safe!
Category Archives: History
The History of Southern Decadence
A Nudist Religion?
Occasionally, the Professor learns something new. I had heard of Jains, and have even taught about them, but the other night, I learned something new about the Jains.
Jainism: Reverence for All Living Things
Jainism was founded by Nataputra Vardhamana, known as Mahavira, “Great Hero,” who became an ascetic, who promoted pacifism and vegetarianism. His followers believe that all living things have an eternal spirit and must be treated with reverence. The central ideas of their faith is Ahisma—nonviolence to all living things, Moksha—liberation from the cycle of death and reincarnation, and The Three Jewels—right knowledge, right faith, and right conduct. There are five basic ethical principles (vows) prescribed. The degree to which these principles must be practiced is different for renunciant and householder. Thus:
1. Non-violence (Ahimsa) – to cause no harm to living beings.
2. Truth (Satya) – to always speak the truth in a harmless manner.
3. Non-stealing (Asteya) – to not take anything that is not willingly given.
4. Celibacy (Brahmacarya) – to not indulge in sensual pleasures.
5. Non-possession (Aparigraha) – to detach from people, places, and material things.
Jains mostly became scholars and merchants, but farmers, who periodically had to kill plants and animals, could not fully commit to Jainism, though some followed its tenements. Jains are known to walk with a broom before them, sweeping away all living things, so as not to harm them. 
Jain saints
Among Jains , there are two main sects- Shwethambara and Digambara. Shwethabars worship idols in pre-sainthood form while digambars worship god in the sainthood form.Nude saints are found in digambar jains community only.
Symbol of Great Sacrifice
Sainthood itself, according to principles, is a symbol of sacrifice. Jaina saints follow strict principles.In digambar community, saints are of three categories.
1. KSHULLAKA
2.AILLAKA, and
3. NIRGRANTHA
Kshullakas wear a saffron dhothi and a saffron cloth is put across their bust. Aillaks wear only a piece in the waist just cover their penis, and nirgranthas are fully nude. This is always followed irrespective of seasonal changes. Female saints (nuns) are allowed only for the first stage and they are called Aryikas. Other two stages are not allowed for them.
Principles followed by jaina nude saints are the following:
1. They will not take a bath or brush their teeth. They only wash their hands and feet and face after going for excretion. They just rub their teeth with their finger after eating food. But they are not permitted to use brush and bathe , as we do. The reason is that, by that action, microbes and other small organisms on our body may die. And , a nirgrantha is to see that no creature dies by his behavior.
2. They take food only once a day.That too is a strict practice. They can not use dishes or dining table . They stand , stretch out their palms, and somebody puts food into their open palms. They test by perusing cleanly and, after confirming that no germ, nor any other dust is there in it, they eat it. If any such thing is found, they leave it there and no food will be taken by them till next day.
3. If they hear any cry of an animal or of a person in distress etc., while taking food , they give up their food.
4. The food they take is simple and tasteless. They take rice, chapa made of wheat, some curry(without salt), coconut water. The food is just to get minimum strength required to maintain life activities.
5. They often take ‘hunger vow’-i.e., no food for the day. Sometimes, this hunger vow continues for up to eight days. The great nude saint of twentieth century, Acharya Shantisagarji Maharaj, had a total period of twenty-six years of hunger in his life span of seventy years.
6. They should not use vehicles for movement. They have to travel by walking only. And they walk faster than us! As they are not supposed to use vehicles, they cannot be seen in foreign countries. They are seen only in India.7. They do not use beds, sleeping bags, or bed sheets and rugs. They sleep on wooden planks or wooden cots, just with a mat on it. In sleep also they do not change their side, with the idea that some germ moving there might be get killed.
8. They do not speak at night.
9. They are not expected to involve themselves in any worldly matters.10. Needless to say- they keep away from sex, not only physically, but also mentally.
11. They keep only the following items with them -a pincha (a bundle of naturally fallen peacock feathers to brush away the dust while sitting), a kamandala (a wooden vessel to clean themselves after going for excretion), and shastras (religious books). They do not keep money or any valuable things.12. They are not supposed to get angry- even to someone who who is angry with them.
13. They don’t even drink water after their regular food, i.e. once a day.
14. They remove their hairs on their face and head only with their hands/ They wont use tools for that.
Homosexuality and the Writers of the Harlem Renaissance
Eric Garber’s study creates a picturesque montage of Harlem gay life during this period when many African Americans tolerated, indulged in, and even celebrated homosexuality. Garber’s is a cinematic look at gay life, art, and culture that pauses here and there to capture the details of the night club scene, art work, personalities, and so on.
Painting Harlem as a gay liberated capital, Garber shows how homosexuality, among intellectuals especially, was accepted as a personal matter that did not interfere with the larger, more important work in racial and cultural advancement. Gays were oppressed during the period, but a thriving black gay subculture ensured that open secrets were kept.
Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, “Moms” Mabley, Mabel Hampton, Alberta Hunter, Gladys Bentley, and other lesbian or bisexual women found employment in show business, and many sang the blues about gay lives and loves.
Drag balls, commonplace during the period, were called “spectacles of color” by Langston Hughes in The Big Sea (1945); such balls were frequented often by the Harlem bohemians who wrote candidly about them in their correspondence.
Speakeasies and buffet flats (rental units notorious for cafeteria-style opportunities for a variety of sex) were spaces in which gays were granted generous liberation. Wallace Thurman, in Infants of the Spring (1932), gives a realistic rendering of the buffet flat that he, Langston Hughes, and Richard Bruce Nugent shared from time to time.
This artistic community was a complex one with an intricate network of members that cut across all sectors of the art world. At a time when New York still had laws banning homosexuality and when baths and gay bars were raided frequently, it is noteworthy that the Harlem Renaissance was moved along, in great measure, by gay men and women who led amazing double lives.
The Function of the Closet
The function of the closet during this period is complex. Although the closet has typically been seen as oppressive, many of these gay artists subverted the stultifying power of the closet by forming an artistic coalition grounded in secrecy and loyalty. Thus, the closet was reconstructed to form a protective shield against discrimination from publishers, patrons, and the media. The closet enabled many writers to blend into the mainstream and to publish without the fear of exposure.
The Influence of Alain Locke
Alain Locke (1886-1954), who has been credited with ushering in the New Negro movement, has been justly criticized for advancing the careers of young black males to the obvious neglect of such writers as Grimké, Dunbar-Nelson, and Georgia Douglas Johnson. Locke, a Harvard Ph.D. and professor at Howard University, promoted the careers of Wallace Thurman, Richard Bruce Nugent, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes.
To crown only Locke with the accolade of inspiring the Harlem Renaissance is to deny the seminal positions held by W. E. B. DuBois, Jessie Fauset, James Weldon Johnson, and the Opportunity and Crisis organizations in fostering the careers of many of the period’s artists.
Without question a misogynist, Locke’s contribution to the development of a gay male literary heritage was formidable and certainly deliberate. He was at the center of the Harlem gay coterie and very early on gave impetus to the careers of Cullen and, especially, Hughes.
Countee Cullen
Through frequent letters, Locke urged Countee Cullen (1903-1946) to write poetry aimed at bettering the race. Urging Cullen to read Edward Carpenter’s anthology of male-male friendship Ioläus, Locke helped the young writer find comfort in realizing his gay self. Thus, Locke was also, in part, responsible for Cullen’s maturing gay sensibilities.
Cullen learned the importance of the closet and wrote poetry that promoted the image and idea of the New Negro while also subtly expressing his gay self. Scholars are beginning to investigate the coded language in Cullen’s poetry in order to establish him as a leading figure in the black gay male literary heritage. Many of the lyrics in The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929) and The Medea and Some Poems (1935) lend themselves to gay readings.
Yet, in as early a work as Color (1925), Cullen wrote gay verses, such as “Tableau,” “Fruit of the Flower,” and “For a Poet”–a poem written at a time when Cullen was embroiled in unrequited love for Langston Hughes.
Langston Hughes
Before he had finished college at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and during his many travels, Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was pursued by Locke, with Cullen mediating. Although sexual relationships never materialized, the intimate friendships of these three gay men were concretized in their commitment to their literary careers and shared racial ideologies.
Although there were regular philosophical disagreements regarding the bewildering vocation of poets who were also deemed “race men,” still a tight bond developed that knit these writers together for their entire lives.
Hughes, arguably the most closeted of the renaissance gay males, had many close associations with homosexuals and lesbians throughout his life. And, as with Cullen, scholars are beginning to decipher the codification of his gayness in his poetry, drama, and fiction.
Commentators have cited many poems as candidates for gay readings, among them “Young Sailor,” “Waterfront Streets,” “Desire,” “Trumpet Player,” “Café 3 A. M.,” and the sequence of poems in Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951).
Angelina Weld Grimké
Angelina Weld Grimké (1880-1958) made her contribution to the lesbian literary heritage as a poet during the Harlem Renaissance. She was published in Locke’s The New Negro (1925) and in Cullen’s Caroling Dusk (1927). Grimké’s love lyrics, many as yet unpublished, are mostly addressed to women and describe love that is hidden, unrequited, or otherwise unrealized.
The honesty of the lesbian passion in these beautiful lyrics secures for Grimké a place in African-American gay literature. Poems such as “Rosalie,” “If,” “To Her of the Cruel Lips,” “El Beso,” “Autumn,” “Give Me Your Eyes,” “Caprichosa,” and “My Shrine” are all testimony to the unrealized lesbian love for which Grimké longed.
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935) was married several times, most notably to the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. All of her marriages were troublesome for one reason or another, but despite her personal problems, she managed to write and publish fiction and poetry. The lesbian relationships that checkered her life had a significant influence on her creativity. For example, Gloria T. Hull suggests that, in the unpublished novel This Lofty Oak, Dunbar-Nelson chronicles the life of Edwina B. Kruse, one of her lovers.
Dunbar-Nelson’s literary reputation during the Harlem Renaissance is assessed largely (and Hull contends erroneously) on her achievement as a poet. She published “Violets” in Crisis in 1917, a work that exemplifies the polish and lucidity that typify her poetry, especially her sonnets.
Hull documents other lesbian affairs with Fay Jackson Robinson, a Los Angeles journalist, and Helene Ricks London, a Bermuda artist. Dunbar-Nelson wrote poetry for these women, most of which does not survive except in diary fragments. Dunbar-Nelson’s diary reveals her prominent place in an active network of African-American lesbians.
Claude McKay
In Home to Harlem (1927), Jamaican-born Claude McKay (1899-1948) openly discusses Harlem’s black experience with lesbianism and even has a significant black gay male character. Following Wayne F. Cooper’s fine biography of McKay (which discusses honestly the writer’s homosexuality), scholars are beginning to make connections between the writer’s sexuality and his writing.
Yet, as is the case with many of the renaissance writers, McKay’s homosexuality as an influence on his creativity must be traced by reading between the lines. Some poems seem to be perfect candidates for such readings, among them “Bennie’s Departure,” “To Inspector W. E. Clark,” “Alfonso, Dressing to Wait at Table,” “The Barrier,” “Courage,” “Adolescence,” “Home Thoughts,” and “On Broadway.”
Other poems, such as “Desolate” and “Absence,” can easily be given gay readings, inasmuch as gays often write on the themes of isolation, dreams deferred, unrequited or secret love, and alienation. 
Wallace Thurman
The short life of Wallace Thurman (1902-1934) gave to the African-American gay and lesbian tradition two novels–The Blacker the Berry (1929) and Infants of the Spring (1932)–which are unmatched as clear and honest depictions of black gay and lesbian life.
Richard Bruce Nugent
The long life of Richard Bruce Nugent (1906-1989) produced very few literary monuments, but like Thurman, Nugent had a penchant for shocking readers and producing works with a decidedly foreign and provocative voice. Locke included Nugent’s gay story “Sahdji” in The New Negro and encouraged the young writer to work at narrative.
In 1926, the one and only issue of Fire!! (a quarterly “Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists”), carried Nugent’s more developed homosexual story “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade”–now praised as the first published African-American gay short story. The story is the fictionalization of an evening Nugent spent walking and talking with Langston Hughes.
The story is a major achievement in gay literary history because it can be read as a defense of homosexuality while it also poignantly thematizes male-male love as beautifully natural and wholesome.
Even in his later years, Nugent continued to write openly about the gay experience: In 1970, Crisis published a Christmas story, “Beyond Where the Star Stood Still,” in which Herod’s catamite offers a remarkable gift to the infant Jesus. Again, Nugent–embracing the mushrooming Gay Rights movement–aimed at forcing the safe African-American world, shaped largely by the fundamentalist church, to face the reality of a black gay presence.
Subverting the Mainstream Power Establishments
Although Harlem was awash with gay literary production during the renaissance, it would be overstating reality to say that there was a deliberate gay movement afoot. Homosexuality might have found toleration in the privacy of speakeasies and salon parties, but the boardrooms at major publishing companies were far less inviting.
Couple that fact with the conservatism that underlined the very notion of a “Talented Tenth,” and it is easy to conclude that any gay literary production (with the clear exception of Thurman and Nugent, who were severely criticized) would have to subvert, in rather creative ways, the mainstream white and black power establishments.
Recurring Themes, Issues, and Ideas
The recurring themes, issues, and ideas in the gay and lesbian writing of the period underscore the endurance of those writers who strove to express their gay selves.
A recurrent motif in the writings of the period is the presence of a forbidden, unnamed, and genderless love. Also common is the use of nature to express the budding forth of an unquestionable though unutterable beauty that is often unappreciated and wasted. Most writers stutter through expressions of a kind of passion so noble yet so unattainable that it must be enacted secretively or abandoned.
Because sexuality is inextricably wound up in the very experience of being human, it often shares turf with deep religious experience or political conviction. Cullen’s “The Black Christ,” for example, is on the surface a narrative poem of salvation. Yet the poet weaves the salvation experience neatly into the somewhat veiled story of Jim’s questionable sexuality.
The homoeroticism of the poem pictures the lynched black boy as a beauty of nature who is raped and sacrificed because he goes unappreciated. Ironically, he is falsely accused and killed for attempting to rape a beautiful white girl whom he understands as the embodiment of Spring. The poem, like many of the period, can be read on a deeper, less apparent level as a diatribe against sexual repression.
Perhaps the most prevalent theme among gay writers of the period is that of the unrealized or displaced dream. One cannot read Grimké, Hughes, McKay, or Cullen without confronting the unachievable, unnamed, and haunting dream.
From the most closeted to the most liberated, the writers of the gay Harlem Renaissance form an unquestionable tradition through which contemporary gay and lesbian readers can see the depth and range of experiences that, in many cases, mirror theirs. If these mirrored images have the power to transform and liberate, perhaps the new renaissance currently underway by African-American gay and lesbian writers will produce a literature that represents more realized and fulfilling dreams.
What Can GLBT People Learn from the Harlem Renaissance?
Justin at A Gay College Guy in Virginia was so kind in giving a shout out to both this blog and my other blog. Justin recently revealed on his blog that he will be taking a class on African American Literature this semester. In honor of Justin and the class that he is taking, I was inspired to write several posts about the Harlem Renaissance, one of the richest periods in American art and literature for African American artists. Many of the topics of the literature of the Harlem Renaissance can be seen as an analogy for the plight of GLBT people in America and around the world as we work everyday for further acceptance, not to mention the number of gay and lesbian artists that made the Harlem Renaissance possible.
Known also by the names Black Renaissance or New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance represented a cultural movement among African Americans roughly between the end of World War I (1918) and the beginning of the Great Depression (1929). The names given to this movement reveal its essential features. Certainly the words “black” and “Negro” mean that this movement centered on African Americans, and the term “renaissance” indicates that something new was born or, more accurately, that a cultural spirit was reawakened in African American cultural life. Although most historians remember the Harlem Renaissance as a literary movement, in fact, African Americans during the 1920s also made great strides in musical and visual arts, as well as science. Finally, the focus on Harlem—an old Dutch-built neighborhood of New York City—indicates that this “renaissance” was something of an urban phenomenon. In fact, the exciting developments in African American cultural life of the 1920s were not limited to Harlem, but also had roots in other urban communities where black Americans migrated in great numbers: East St. Louis, Illinois; Chicago’s south side; and Washington, D.C. The Harlem Renaissance included several important gay and lesbian writers.
The artists of the Harlem Renaissance forwarded two goals. Like the journalists and other “crusaders” of the Progressive era, black authors tried to point out the injustices of racism in American life. Second, newspaper editors, activists, authors, and other artists began to promote a more unified and positive culture among African Americans. Early efforts to publicize a more unified consciousness among African Americans included two publications in 1919: Robert Kerlin’s collection of editorial material in Voice of the Negro and Emmett Scott’s Letters from Negro Migrants. On the political front, leaders such as Marcus Garvey began to put forth plans for black economic self-sufficiency, political separatism, and the creation of a cross-national African consciousness. 
Several important developments during the World War I era gave rise to the Harlem Renaissance. First, black southerners since the turn of the century had been moving in large numbers to the North’s industrial cities. As a result, southern blacks who had been denied their political rights and had resorted to sharecropping as a means of livelihood came into contact with northern African Americans who were more often the descendants of free blacks and, therefore, had better access to education and employment. Additionally, black Americans moving to the cities had much to complain about. World War I, the so-called war to make the world safe for democracy, had been a bitter experience for most African Americans. The U.S. Army was rigidly segregated, race riots broke out in many American cities during or immediately after the war, and the North was residentially and economically segregated like the South, despite the absence of Jim Crow Laws.
Gays, Lesbians and The Harlem Renaissance
The culture of the Harlem Renaissance was one that was open to sexual exploration and gays and lesbians, both Black and White, found a community there. The jazz and blues clubs of Harlem felt like a welcoming place to gays and lesbians of different races. Author Arwyn Moore claims that many white gays and lesbians who frequented Harlem nightlife became a part of the Black culture: listening to the music, reading the literature and most importantly, relating to common prejudice and bigotry both experienced from the greater mainstream culture.
Rent Parties
In addition to the clubs of Harlem, private rent parties became a place where gays and lesbians could dance and socialize without fear of being arrested. Rent parties were private parties that people threw in their apartments to raise 
rent. Rent parties became places for gays and lesbians to mingle in relative safety.
Out Blues Musicians
The Blues music that was popular at the time was also an attraction for gays and lesbians. Many of the lyrics spoke of gender-bending men and women, blurring of sexual boundaries and same-sex attraction. One of the most famous Blues singers of that time was Gladys Bentley who was notorious for wearing men’s clothing on stage and for her marriage to another woman.
Ma Rainey was another Black lesbian singer, her famous song begged listeners to “Prove it on Me.” Ma Rainey was said to have had a relationship with bisexual singer Bessie Smith.
Five Years Ago…
At this moment, five years ago, I sat having brunch with my roommate, not knowing that in the next twelve hours, my world would be turned upside down. We returned home form brunch, she passed out from too many mimosas, and I sat and watched in horror as a hurricane covered the whole Gulf of Mexico. It was coming straight for us and was steadily strengthening. I tried to wake my roommate to see if she wanted to evacuate, but once she had been drinking, not much would wake her until she had recovered. The news from the Weather Channel got increasingly worse. We had to get out of there. Finally, she woke up and realized the same thing.
I had lived through hurricanes before, nothing though on this magnitude. What most people don’t realize is that living inland an hour or two away from the coast can still be a devastating place. The tidal surge is not as much of a concern for us as is the tornadoes and winds that come with the storm as it makes its way inland. We decided not to wait out the storm and left town, almost too late. The wind and rain had already begun. We took a more rural course to avoid the massive traffic delays. Finally, late into the night, we reached Texas and found a hotel room. There, we were stuck for the next five day, in a town whose cable service refused to have any other news service but Fox News. We watched as the levees broke in New Orleans, hoping to hear reports from home. They didn’t come.
On Thursday, we decided that it was time to head back home. The closer we got, the more devastation and destruction we saw. Roads were closed due to the number of trees that had fallen and not enough manpower was available to clear them. Other roads that had been opened were closed to most traffic except for relief workers and emergency personnel. The devastation we saw was indescribable, and we weren’t even headed to New Orleans or the Gulf Coast. The most difficult part of the journey was finding a gas station that had both electricity and gas. Most of the stations had run out and did not know when more could be delivered. Most of the other stations had not had electricity restored to them and remained closed.
Finally, we got near home to see the street next to us with hundreds of pine trees piled up and completely blocking the road. It looked more like a lumber yard than a residential neighborhood. A tornado had landed in our neighborhood. We passed a nearby church, that had been set up as a tent city. Tents were all that many people had left. Food and water was in short supply and everyone was trying to help out. Then we turned on our street. I was wholly unprepared for the sight that was there. The houses around us were largely spared. Our house was barely visible from the pine trees that lay on top of it. Thankfully, it was a sturdy house and the walls had survived. One tree had gone through the roof like an arrow, leaving a hole in the roof that pierced though the air conditioner ducts and and eventually stuck out of the living room. That one tree had done the most damage, for as the rain continued, the water flowed through the air conditioner ducts and out the vents, leaving what looked like waterfall paintings down the walls. The carpet was sopping wet and with the humidity and heat, minus air conditioning, the house felt like a sauna. The hundreds of books in my home office were destroyed with water damage, and most of my clothes were ruined by the same waterfalls that had come through the air conditioner ducts. Those that weren’t destroyed by the water rushing into the house were already beginning to mold from the heat and humidity.
Suddenly, I had found myself homeless, since the house was utterly unlivable. Family and friends came with trucks, trailers, and extra gas to load up my belongings and take them to a storage unit in the town my parents lived. My life had suddenly been packed away in boxes and put into storage. I would not find another permanent place to live for over a year. During that year, I was forced to live in the schools dorms. It was all that was available. Then, a friend of mine had grandparents with an extra house and they allowed me to live there for the next six months. Finally, things began to settle down and life returned somewhat to normal, but it has been a long process. It is also one of the reasons that I am still in graduate school because certain milestones of my degree process had to be put off for months because of the turmoil caused by Katrina.
New Orleans is what you hear about most in the news. It was the larges city hit by the disaster and the floods caused by the levees breaking were extremely destructive. What most of the news accounts today are forgetting is that the Mississippi Gulf Coast was what was where the hurricane made landfall. The cities of Bay St. Louis and Waveland were wiped off the map. They have rebuilt but it was a slow and long process. The devastation was so great that the two towns discussed merging and becoming Bayland, because the destruction seemed too insurmountable. They honestly wondered if they could rebuild the cities from the ground up. The cities of Long Beach, Gulfport, and Biloxi were equally devastated. Antebellum homes that had stood for over 100 years, and had survived Hurricane Camille in 1969, were lost forever. Only the foundations remained, nothing else could even be seen of these houses. Two universities were forced to close because of the devastation wrought by the storm. One never did rebuild and chose to concentrate their efforts on their other campus. The other took up residence in an old abandoned hospital while they attempted to rebuild in a new location a few more mile inland.
So as the discussion of Katrina is on the news today, please remember that it was not just New Orleans that suffered. It was the whole Gulf Coast from New Orleans to Pensacola, Florida. Also, remember that the hurricane and its destruction did not end after it made landfall. The destruction continued inland for hundreds of miles. South of Interstate-10 was hit the hardest, but inland the destruction reached all the way to Interstate-20.
Edward II, Queen of England?
The fourteenth-century English king, Edward I was “afflicted” with a son who did not live up to the manly expectations he had for him; his son, Edward, liked gardening and shoeing horses more than jousting. Modern sensibilities aside, in the world of medieval royalty, such unmanly pursuits were simply unworthy of a future king. To clear up the problem, Edward I (also known as Edward Longshanks, “The Hammer of the Scots”) appointed him a wildly charismatic squire named Piers Gaveston from Gascony. The hope was that this successful, talented young man might rub off on young Edward. The two got on famously. A bit too famously:
…and when the King’s son saw him he fell so much in love that he entered upon an enduring compact with him, and chose and determined to knit an indissoluble bond with him, before all other mortals.
Other chroniclers note that the King feared Gaveston “loved his son inordinately,” that the younger Edward “had an inordinate affection for a certain Gascon knight,” and that the Gascon might find himself in trouble “on account of the undue intimacy which the young Lord Edward had adopted towards him.”
Before long, the King was looking for excuses to keep the two apart. The youngsters had gotten into trouble by trespassing onto the Bishop of Coventry’s property and poaching the Bishop’s deer, and the King seized upon this incident as an opportunity to separate them for a few months. However, rather than send away the squire, Edward removed his own son (their relationship was, admittedly, chilly). Young Edward was absent from court for the summer of 1305, and Gaveston was left without a playmate.
The happy pair couldn’t be kept apart forever. Edward returned to court, and before long he was bestowing gifts, titles and land on Gaveston. In one particularly bold move in April of 1307 he asked his father Edward I to make Gaveston the Count of Ponthieu, which was a pretty modest title but did include a fair bit of land. King Edward, who’d spent a lot of his time battling the Scots (and would later leave his son in rather a poor position there), would have none of it:
You baseborn whoreson! Do you want to give lands away now, you who never gained any? As the Lord lives, if it were not for fear of breaking up the kingdom you should never enjoy your inheritance!
King Edward reached forward and grabbed a handful of his son’s hair, and yanked it clean out. Gaveston was banished from England entirely, but Prince Edward followed him out, showering him with tapestries, quilts, assorted other presents and easy money. This banishment only lasted about three months, because Edward I died on July 7. This left Prince Edward, now Edward II, free to indulge himself.
The Reign of Edward II
As such, the first thing Edward II did was recall Gaveston and appoint the man earl of Cornwall and give him tons of money. Gaveston was also immediately slated to marry Edward’s niece, even though his taste in girls was, well, somewhat questionable. The new king also stripped the bishop of Coventry (he of the poached deer) of his title and imprisoned the bishop in the Tower of London. Things went downhill from there.
At Gaveston’s wedding, Edward called for games and jousting, at which the young groom and his coterie excelled. This tweaked the old baronial guard to no end. Those nobles who enjoyed power during Edward I’s reign were now second-fiddle to the dashing young king, and a newcomer at that. To make matters worse, when out making arrangements for his royal marriage, Edward made Gaveston regent rather than any of the other more experienced, highly-placed barons. Edward had also been efficiently depleting the crown’s coffers by bestowing outrageous gifts on his friend. As contemporary chroniclers wrote,
Our King… was incapable of moderate favor, and on account of [Gaveston] was said to forget himself, and so [Gaveston] was accounted a sorcerer.
When Edward returned with his new bride Isabella, Gaveston met them toting so much jewelry he “quite eclipsed the king.” The king ditched his bride and ran to Gaveston, embracing him tightly, crying, “Brother, brother!” Isabella’s father, King Philip IV of France, had given Edward some fancy jewelry which was found to be hanging on Gaveston’s neck the very next day. This angered many of the nobles, and it was simply bad form for someone else to shows up wearing your wedding presents a few days after the ceremony.
English Nobles and Their Hatred of Gaveston
Several contemporary sources criticized Edward’s seeming infatuation with 
Piers Gaveston, to the extent that he ignored and humiliated his wife. Chroniclers called the relationship excessive, immoderate, beyond measure and reason and criticized his desire for wicked and forbidden sex. The Westminster chronicler claimed that Gaveston had led Edward to reject the sweet embraces of his wife; while the Meaux Chronicle (written several decades later) took concern further and complained that, Edward took too much delight in sodomy. While such sources do not, in themselves, prove that Edward and Gaveston were lovers, they at least show that some contemporaries and later writers thought strongly that this might be the case.
Gaveston was considered to be athletic and handsome; he was a few years older than Edward and had seen military service in Flanders before becoming Edward’s close companion. He was known to have a quick, biting wit, and his fortunes continued to ascend as Edward obtained more honors for him, including the Earldom of Cornwall. Earlier, Edward I had attempted to control the situation by exiling Gaveston from England. However, upon the elder king’s death in 1307, Edward II immediately recalled him. Isabella’s marriage to Edward subsequently took place in 1308. Almost immediately, she wrote to her father, Philip the Fair, complaining of Edward’s behavior.
Gaveston the upstart was proving to be such a pain that a group of nobles threatened to boycott the coronation unless he wasn’t allowed to be there. Diplomatic Edward assured them he wouldn’t. Of course, he showed up anyway. Not only did he show up, but he was in the processional line carrying the crown, dressed in royal purple sewn with pearls, “so decked out that he more resembled the god Mars than an ordinary mortal.” Barons scrambled to throw him out or kill him outright, but, with some effort, calmed themselves.
As it turned out, Gaveston had also insisted upon coordinating the entire event, and he flubbed it completely. The ceremony ran over by three full hours and was short of seats, forcing nobility to stand. Standing room in the back was so crowded that a knight was suffocated underfoot. Even with the extra time, the banquet wasn’t ready when it finished. Food was poorly cooked and service was reportedly very poor. The ceremony was a complete disaster, and only because a certain Gascon had worked his way deeply in the king’s favor. It wasn’t long before Queen Isabella, by all accounts a charming, beautiful person, was writing her father that “I am the most wretched of wives,” and that Edward was “an entire stranger in my bed.”
Earls to Swine
Clearly, this situation couldn’t last. An overwhelming majority of barons got together and announced that this had gone far enough, and that Gaveston had to go. To be sure, Edward would not be the first or last English king to 
whore around the kingdom but, medieval attitudes towards homosexuality being seen as sinful and blasphemous, something bad was eventually bound to happen. Edward, surrounded by powerful, strong-willed men, capitulated, stripped Gaveston of his titles and land, and sent him off to Ireland. To make sure he wasn’t coming back, the bishops announced that the Gaveston would be excommunicated if he ever set foot back in England. However, before long, he lobbied the pope strongly and got the excommunication threat removed. He returned, and Edward obligingly appointed him to be the earl of Cornwall again. Three years later, the barons again united in disgust and threw Gaveston out. To reign in the king’s expenses they also took over his finances, in his words, “as one would provide for an idiot.”
Gaveston was back before long, associating openly with Edward, who made him earl of Cornwall for the third time. The bishops excommunicated Gaveston; the lords prepared for civil war. The king and his favorite fled to Scotland, hoping to secure safety there, but to no avail. As armies commanded by the Ordainers approached the couple in Newcastle, they fled, leaving behind not only household servants, furniture, and treasure, but Edward’s long-suffering wife Isabella. She was three months pregnant. If nothing else, she enjoyed a modicum of popular support, having been yanked around the country by her husband and his lover and, heavy with child, abandoned to advancing armies.
As the forces got closer to the couple, Edward was forced to dump Gaveston off and tried to stir up support for himself in any number of English cities. It didn’t work; Gaveston was captured by the earl of Pembroke, who promised to deliver him to the king and barons for suitable punishment. However, on the way back, the good Pembroke passed within a few miles of his own castle. He had been away for some time, and took this opportunity to slip by and freshen up the wife. The one night he was gone a renegade group of disgruntled barons swept over Gaveston and ransacked his room. And if they weren’t pissed enough, they found him in possession of some of the crown jewels. Gaveston’s weakness for jewelry and baubles had proved urgent enough for him to convince King Edward to loan them out. While Gaveston’s motives for “borrowing” the crown jewels were probably vanity rather than theft, the presence of such sacred items on his person was more than enough to get him in trouble. He was marched some miles on bare feet and thrown into a nearby dungeon.
To his credit, Pembroke was upset. He didn’t harbor kinder feelings for Gaveston than anybody else, but he had given his word that the prancer would make it back to Edward. He asked a variety of barons and other officials to intervene on his behalf so as not to lose face, but nobody wanted to rescue Gaveston — in the hands of barons, he was truly friendless.
An Untidy End
Finally, one of them took some initiative. Gaveston was marched outside, up a hill, and forced to lie his head on a stump, whereupon it was neatly removed. There was then some consternation about who exactly ought to grab the head and take responsibility for the deed; once that was settled they were stuck with the headless body of Gaveston and had to do something with it. The corpse was carried to the castle of one of Gaveston’s enemies, the earl of Warwick, but he turned it away at the door. It was accepted by some nuns in Oxford, but they couldn’t bury it because Gaveston had died an excommunicate.
While Gavseton had riled up enough nobility to instigate a civil war, his sudden death split their union and the kingdom drifted back to internal squabbling rather than armed conflict. However, Edward was inconsolable: “By God’s Soul, he acted as a fool. If he had taken my advice he would never have fallen into the hands of the earls,” he wept. Fortunately for his troubled 
psyche, Isabella gave birth to the future Edward III just in time to distract him. The king cooed over his child. Isabella had been patient with him during this dalliance, and their relationship improved. For a little while, anyway. And then, it soured. Precipitously.
Following Gaveston’s death, the king increased favor to his nephew-by-marriage (who was also Gaveston’s brother-in-law), Hugh Despenser the Younger. But, as with Gaveston, the barons were indignant at the privileges Edward lavished upon the Despenser father and son, especially when the younger Despenser began in 1318 to strive to procure for himself the earldom of Gloucester and its associated lands.
With Hugh Despenser, the situation grew worse. Edward II made similar mistakes with Despenser and his reign was challenged by the pretender John Deydras. Deydras was eventually executed but not before Edward II’s unpopularity for his actions became even more apparent. Eventually, Despenser was banished, but unlike Gaveston, he was not to return. Queen Isabella had enough, and left Edward II for another lover – Mortimer. Despenser was eventually tracked down and executed – he had his genitals cut off and burnt in a fire before his eyes.
In 1327, Edward II was imprisoned, and Isabella and her lover, Mortimer seized control of the kingdom. After trying to escape, Mortimer eventually ordered Edward’s death.
The government of Isabella and Mortimer was so precarious that they dared not leave the deposed king in the hands of their political enemies. On 3 April, Edward II was removed from Kenilworth and entrusted to the custody of two subordinates of Mortimer, then later imprisoned at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire where, it was generally believed, he was murdered by an agent of Isabella and Mortimer on 11 October 1327.
On the night of 11 October while lying on a bed [the king] was suddenly seized and, while a great mattress… weighed him down and suffocated him, a plumber’s iron, heated intensely hot, was introduced through a tube into his anus so that it burned the inner portions beyond the intestines. — Thomas de la Moore.
It was said that the screams of the king were so loud that they could be heard miles away.
Edward III finally asserted his independence. In October 1330, a Parliament was called in Nottingham, just days before Edward’s eighteenth birthday, and Mortimer and Isabella were seized by Edward and his companions from inside Nottingham Castle. In spite of Isabella’s entreaty to her son, “Fair son, have pity on the gentle Mortimer,” Mortimer was conveyed to the Tower.
Accused of assuming royal power and of various other high misdemeanors, he was condemned without trial and ignominiously hanged at Tyburn on 29 November 1330, his vast estates being forfeited to the crown. Mortimer’s widow, Joan, received a pardon in 1336 and survived till 1356. She was buried beside Mortimer at Wigmore, but the site was later destroyed.
Cultural depictions of Edward II of England
Edward II of England has been portrayed in popular culture a number of times. The most famous fictional account of Edward II’s reign is Christopher Marlowe’s play Edward II (c. 1592). It depicts Edward’s reign as a single narrative, and does not include Bannockburn.
In 1991 English filmmaker Derek Jarman adapted the Christopher Marlowe play into a film featuring Tilda Swinton, Steven Waddington, Andrew Tiernan, Nigel Terry, and Annie Lennox. The film specifically portrays a homosexual relationship between Edward II and Piers Gaveston.
Edward II was portrayed as an effeminate homosexual in Braveheart. Edward II’s death and sexuality are mentioned a number of times in Michael Crichton’s novel Timeline
A major new biography of Edward II by Seymour Phillips was published in 2010.
Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam
One of the most influential Victorian poems, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam (1850) is actually 133 poetic fragments or sections that differ in theme, tone, and presentation, but are all unified by the poetic persona’s grief, doubt, and search for faith. The composition of In Memoriam was initiated by Tennyson’s deep suffering at the loss of his brilliant young friend, the promising poet and scholar Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly in 1833 at the age of twenty-two. Although many of the sections were written in the three years following Hallam’s death, when Tennyson’s grief was most acute, he continued adding to and rearranging his long poem as science and religion shook traditional beliefs in God and Christianity. Finally, in 1850, Tennyson published his lyrical elegy. Immediately well-received, it brought Tennyson considerable fame and was undoubtedly influential in the decision to appoint Tennyson as William Wordsworth’s successor as British poet laureate.
Tennyson clearly does not fit into convenient categories such as “radical” or even “progressive”; rather, he, like so many of his contemporaries, 
was an eager participant in the ongoing debates on gender roles and the place of emotion and commitment in a society that seemed obsessed with technological progress and the accumulation of wealth.
As part of his explorations of alternative forms for social organization and moral engagement, he looked to homosocial bonding as one source for positive (in the case of men) or negative (in the case of women) emotional ties that might have an effect upon the fragmentation that he saw around him.
But homosocial and homosexual desire are not always easily distinguishable, and certainly in In Memoriam the boundary between platonic and actively erotic forms of love seems fuzzy.
In this way, Tennyson challenges are our own ability to classify writers as “gay” and “straight.” Though heterosexual, Tennyson wrote poetry dealing with love between men that is still capable of evoking a profound response from gay audiences today and that has an important place in any consideration of gay literary history.
Selections from In Memoriam:
XXVI.
Still onward winds the dreary way;
I with it; for I long to prove
No lapse of moons can canker Love,
Whatever fickle tongues may say.
And if that eye which watches guilt
And goodness, and hath power to see
Within the green the moulder’d tree,
And towers fall’n as soon as built–
Oh, if indeed that eye foresee
Or see (in Him is no before)
In more of life true life no more
And Love the indifference to be,
Then might I find, ere yet the morn
Breaks hither over Indian seas,
That Shadow waiting with the keys,
To shroud me from my proper scorn.
I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:
I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;
Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.
I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
Naked Male Camaraderie
After my rant yesterday about finding the right man, I thought I would lighten things up before I got to my next post which for me is a bit of a downer. So let’s talk about naked men…
For the past three decades, America seems to be getting more prudish than ever where nudity is concerned. Take the Janet Jackson episode during the Super Bowl a few years ago. Has America always been this prudish? In television and movies, yes, but in everyday life, I don’t believe the evidence supports it. John Quincy Adams used to get up two hours before sunrise to go skinny dipping in the Potomac River, and he was not even the only president to enjoy skinny dipping. Rumor has it that Harry Truman enjoyed swimming au naturel, and that Billy Graham went skinny dipping with Lyndon Johnson.
Until the last three decades, American high school boys took showers after PE classes. Nudity in gyms showers was quite normal. Guys didn’t do the towel dance. If you were in the steam room or sauna, you went naked. You took your shower in the open, but now most guys wear towels in the steam room and sauna, and shower in private stalls.
What’s so odd is that 40 years ago, nude swimming was the norm. It’s what was acceptable. Below, you can see that they even used to shower in groups before they jumped in the pool. 
A paradigm shift has happened and I’m curious as to why? I really can’t help but wonder — of all the factors that have gone into this shift. The YMCAs used to enforce nude swimming and many, like the one below, even gyms right above or next to the pool. Between laps, guys would just head over and lift weights — yes, completely nude. 
From the 1890s to the 1930s, men who swam at the YMCA did so in the nude, apparently wool swimsuits (the fashion of the time) clogged up the pool filters. An excerpt from the history of the Seattle YMCA gives a reason for the change:
An early casualty of gender equity was males-only nude swimming in the downtown pool. Men and boys had been accustomed to swimming au naturel at the YMCA, not only in Seattle but in Ys everywhere, since the 1890s. The practice may have evolved from problems created by the long, wool swimming suits then in fashion, which apparently shed so much they gummed up the pool filters. Later, nude swimming was justified on the grounds of hygiene. A handbook in use at the Seattle Y in the 1920s required that “A good soap bath must be taken before entering the swimming pool” in the same paragraph that specified “The wearing of swimming suits or supporters will not be allowed except by permission from the director.”
Is gender equality the only reason for the change in nudity in all-male arenas? I doubt it. Women are still not allowed in boys locker rooms. Public baths have largely closed because of the AIDS scare, but also because of a crack down on “morality.” Could the movie Caligula be made today? It is doubtful. One of the major changes has to do with the Reagan presidency. Many Republicans venerate him because of his ushering in of patriotism (which had declined since the 
Vietnam War), deregulation, and the Christian Right. Did the resurgence of prudish behavior begin with the Reagan administration, or did it begin before then? The Puritans supplied us with a large number of our founding fathers. Yet, as prudish and “pure” as the Puritans were, they still had more illegitimate births per capita than any other group in American history. Why? Because most of them lived on the frontier, and they could not wait to have sex until after the next time that a minister would travel through to marry them. Puritan ministers were not a populous group, so communities shared ministers, only getting a minister every few months. The same is true of the rural South during colonial times, when Anglican priests were few and far between.
The ultimate question is, with the resurging popularity of porn and the internet, why is America so prudish?
More after the JUMP.
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Is There Any Sport More Homoerotic Than Rugby?
My roommate in college used to play rugby. It is a rough and tumble sport with men in short shorts and “rugby” shirts. After the games, the guys would generally get drunk and/or high, which eventually led to them getting naked at various points. Every time my roommate told me about the traditions that were associated with rugby, they tended to included nudity. I hope I get the terminology right here, if not, let me know. I am doing this by memory. There seemed to be a lot of hazing of new team members. First of all, when a player scored his first try, he would strip naked, right there and then and run around the field. Another tradition was the elephant walk, to show team unity. As I understood it, all the guys would be naked and reach through the guy in front’s leg to grab their dick and then walk around the room. Do any of you have any stories of sports hazing?
So to go along with this post, I thought I would give a little history of rugby for those who might not be as familiar with the sport. William Webb Ellis is credited with inventing rugby in 1823 by picking up the ball while playing football at Rugby School and running with it. The claim is disputed but there is little doubt that rugby developed at public schools out of a large-scale, few-rules, mauling scrum game. Definition of the code began in 1863 when the Football Association was formed and outlawed handling and hacking. Richmond, Blackheath, and some London clubs stayed with the handling code and in 1871 the Rugby Football Union was formed. As in soccer, the balance moved in favor of northern clubs and there were accusations of professionalism. In 1895 St Helens, Wigan, and a number of northern clubs formed a breakaway union, which became the Rugby Football League in 1922. The number of players was reduced from fifteen to thirteen and scrums restricted to produce a fast handling game.
The two codes, amateur and professional, treated each other with disdain for many years. But the advent of television after the Second World War led to a gradual thaw. Rugby union introduced a league system, with promotion and relegation, expenses became ever more substantial, and the ban on players returning after playing rugby league was lifted in 1995. Full professionalism followed, together with substantial restructuring of competitions.
The Photography of the Argentine Marcos López
While doing a little research about sensuality and sports, I came across an article in Dissidence (The Hispanic Journal of Theory and Criticism) entitled “Homosocialism ↔ Homoeroticism in the Photography of Marcos López” by David Williams Foster. Here is an excerpt from that article:
…One of the most homosocial spaces in modern society is the locker room, which is closely associated with other athletic and gymnasium spaces like the shower, the steam room, the jacuzzi, the massage room, and the infirmary. The bath house/sauna was, before AIDS, one of the great meeting places for gay men, and the fancy gym is, for today’s guppy, one major site for same-sex cruising (American university sports centers are notorious in this regard). The homoerotic dimensions of sports has long been maintained, and it is difficult to forget that the original Olympics were performed in the nude; homoerotic overtones have also long been associated with European soccer, and Bazán recalls the 1995 controversy surrounding the Argentine national team. The sociologist Juan José Sebreli first broached the subject in print in a book from 1981, Fútbol y masas, but develops it as a major theme in his 1998 La era del fútbol .
In López’s image—titled El vestuario,—one is particularly struck by the fact that none of the seven men (athletes and trainers) whose faces can be seen (there is an eighth man stretched out on a massage table, his face hidden by one of the other players) looks anywhere else but directly at the camera: no one peeks out of the closet here at the body of another man… Moreover, all of the men visible are hypermasculine, confident in their pose before the camera, with marked secondary sexual characteristics well in evidence, such as hairy chest and legs, heavy beard, mustaches, muscular torso and legs, with appropriate tertiary accoutrements such as athletic wear, soccer ball, the ankle bandage and what appears to be a tube or container of ointment that are metonymies of strenuous physical activity. The file of identical lockers against the back wall iconicizes the continuity between these men where the sameness of their macho presence guarantees the easy circulation of the norms of homosociality without any trace of the discrepancy from these norms that would signal the contramasculine, the effeminate, the threat of homosexuality. True, one of the men, to the left of the image, somewhat older than the others, is fleshier than one associates with a sustained athletic life, while, in the right-hand background there is a frankly paunchy individual with long hair (he is, nevertheless, properly uniformed for athletic play). But these are, if they are discordant notes, minor ones that only serve to affirm the overall conventional hypermasculinity of the men we see in the foreground. In short, this is a world of men and for men, and if resolute homosociality were ever to segue into homoeroticism, it is not likely to include any sign of the feminine. It is precisely the homoerotic undertones of the hypermasculine universe of soccer that both Bazán and Sebreli speak of, and, while Archetti underscores the way in which soccer—like many all-male sports—transculturally serve to assimilate young men to the codes of masculine homosociality, there is no way of categorically specifying when the frisson of the homoerotic will occur.
One of López’s most outrageous compositions is Tomando sol en la terraza, which was used for the invitation and publicity for the exhibit for the early 2005 show of his work at the White Box….Yet, by contrast, the [image] more readily evoke[s] the homoerotic, which is located here in the display of the partially naked male body. Indeed, the lack of an explicit homosocial context would indicate, precisely, that sunbathing is not routine masculine behavior. And although the image of the partially naked male body is legitimated in certain contexts, such as that of the athletic locker room, it does not customarily involve the privileged exposure of the penis.
Tomando sol is constructed around the common occurrence of sunbathing, which in an apartment-dwelling metropolis like Buenos Aires often means stretching out on a towel on the rooftop of one’s high-rise building. Certainly, the majority of sunbathers are women, and sports and other physically active undertakings are the most appropriate way for the male body to gain whatever are considered the beneficial aspects of direct exposure to the sun;
concomitantly, to lie inert in the sun is a female/womanlike activity. True, López’s male sunbather is surrounded by the details of a masculine world: various bottles of beer and a bottle opener, along with a half-consumed glass of brew. There is an ashtray with the butts of two consumed cigarettes, a carton of Marlboros (unquestionably a real man’s tobacco of choice), and there is a stack of magazines at hand, the top one of which appears to be a sports magazine, as its cover carries a routine soccer image. One rather whimsical detail is the garden hose (often laughingly referred to as a penis substitute), which runs alongside the reclining man and loops its way around one of the beer bottles, as though it were a sunning serpent; its two tones of green partially match the colors of the blanket on which the man lies sunning.
The model here is, in all regards, one of López’s by-now familiar hypermasculine bodies: trim and muscular, with firm and hairy legs and a nicely matted chest; his strong facial characteristics are manly in every regard: in sum, a man’s man. What is jarring, however, is the way he is dressed and what that dress leaves exposed. Nude sunbathing on a private rooftop may be preferred by some men, although heterosexual men are less likely than women (or homosexual men) to worry about tan lines: indeed, the tan line on a naked male body might be viewed by some as sexy, since it frames the now exposed but usually concealed genitals or buttocks. But the covering of the lower regions of the body means wearing a swimsuit; even underwear might be permissible. However, López’s model is swathed in athletic bandages from his midriff to halfway down his thighs, something like an improvised locker-room version of surfing shorts, although tighter and neutral in color, as opposed to the often colorful and baggy original. Moreover, the athletic bandage around the model’s middle picks up on the more reasonable presence of the wrapping around both his ankles and instep, such as one might find on an athlete’s foot to prevent or remedy a sprain from action in sports.
But what is specifically transgressive about Tomando sol is the way in which the model’s penis is exposed. The athletic bandage is wrapped around theman’s waist, buttocks, and upper thighs in such a way that, although some minor glimpses of skin are allowed, his genitals are exposed, with his penis (notably uncircumcised from the point of view of a North American viewer) resting on the edge of a strip of the bandage. One does not normally sunbathe the penis without the rest of the lower body being exposed, and, aside from the medical inadvisability of such exposure, one is unaware of any known fetish of the sunbathed (or sunburned) penis. López is known for his over-the-top whimsicalness, and it is amply evident in this composition, with its showcasing of the model’s respectably sized penis and the echoes of the strongly masculine phallus in the beer bottles, the cigarettes, and the garden hose. The contemplation of the male body required by this composition, one that underscores the phallic, disrupts the heterosexist homosocial convention whereby the male body is masculine (a condition of the appropriate of the homosocial pact), but it is not erotic: the genitals are assumed to be there, and with acceptable potency, but they can never be the
object of confirming scrutiny. Whenever the male body is the occasion for the spectacular gaze, as the female body routinely is, it is placed at the disposal of a homoerotic interest that is inadmissible within the manly homosocial pact.
For the full article, check out http://www.dissidences.org/MarcosLopez.html.
Excerpt from:
Foster, David William. “Homosocialism ↔ Homoeroticism in the Photography of Marcos López”. Dissidences. On line. Internet: 30/08/05 (http://www.dissidences/MarcosLopez.html)
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