bal@drutx.UUCP (LesebergB) (02/06/86)
I was looking at this week's issue of OUTFRONT,
Colorado's #1 gay publication, and it occured to me how such
things are giving gays a bad reputation. There are many ads for
X-rated theatres and bookstores, a leather bar ad, and the
PERSONNAL ADS. These personnal ads are very specific in what
these guys are looking for. I'm not saying that these ads should
be taken out or anything, but can't there be any positive gay
publications to show society we are not sex crazy 24 hours a day
(though some of us might be). This is "Colorado's #1"
publication. I see copies of it littered in the street. My
straight friends see it and they say, "How can this filth be #1
?!?!?" "Your friends aren't like this."
Oh sure, it's fun to read, but it just gives the gay
society as a "whole" a bad picture, and misleading. In my home
country, Lincoln, Nebraska, the most popular publication was the
VOICE. This was a very attractive, magazine style newspaper with
regular columns and very good articles and ADS ! I am trying to
get a subscription out here for it, since it was a good source of
the news for the local gay scene there.
I'd be interested if other communities have impressive
gay newspapers that are not so misleading as the sex rags
circulated in the Denver.
"36...24...36...here we go,
I've never had a girl before ....."
- "Digital Display" Ready for the World
____ _______ _____ _______ ------- Brad Leseberg
/ __ \ |__ __| / _ \ |__ __| -====------ AT&T Informaton Systems
| (__) | | | \ \ \_\ | | -======------ ...!ihnp4!drutx!bal
| __ | | | / \ __ | | --====------- 11900 North Pecos
| | | | | | | (\ / / | | ----------- Westminster,C0 80234
|_| |_| |_| \_____/ |_| ------- (303) 538-4964lmf@drutx.UUCP (Lori Fuller) (02/07/86)
The end of this posting is sexist and inappropriate > "36...24...36...here we go, > I've never had a girl before ....." It also negates the content of the posting. Watch what you're doing. Lori Fuller -- Lori Fuller ihnp4!drutx!lmf (303) 538-1136
rob@ptsfb.UUCP (Rob Bernardo) (02/08/86)
In article <500@drutx.UUCP> bal@drutx.UUCP (LesebergB) writes: > > I was looking at this week's issue of OUTFRONT, >Colorado's #1 gay publication, and it occured to me how such >things are giving gays a bad reputation. There are many ads for >X-rated theatres and bookstores, a leather bar ad, and the >PERSONNAL ADS. These personnal ads are very specific in what >these guys are looking for. I'm not saying that these ads should >be taken out or anything, but can't there be any positive gay >publications to show society we are not sex crazy 24 hours a day >(though some of us might be). This is "Colorado's #1" >publication. I see copies of it littered in the street. My >straight friends see it and they say, "How can this filth be #1 >?!?!?" "Your friends aren't like this." 1. What about Christopher Street? 2. The National Enquirer is probably number 1 somewhere, too, I suspect. 3. To a large extent, mainstream publications satisfy gay people's nonsexual and nonsocial needs. Separate gay publications exist only to fill the void left by mainstream publications. The void includes a. news of specific interest to gay people, which often the mainstream publications won't/don't print. b. reviews of movies, books, etc. that have a "gay theme". c. personal ads or anything else that has to do with homosexual social/sexual relations. 4. Publications solely dedicated to sleazy heterosexual personal ads exist. But then why are sleazy homosexual personal ads incorporated in otherwise non-sleazy publications? Probably because those publishers and editors who are upfront enough to put out a gay publication are not embarrassed by the range of human sexuality. 5. Many people feel so oppressed/afraid with regards to their homosexuality that they will only venture out into gay institutions (e.g. bars) and gay publications to satisfy their basic needs, i.e. sex. Which is to say, there probably is greater demand for gay publications to carry personal ads than to cover news of interest to gay people. ********************************************************************** *Once you start feeling you have to apologize for someone else's * *behavior simply because they are classified in the same category * *as you, you begin to think about repressing their behavior. * *YOU ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR OTHER GAY PEOPLE'S BEHAVIOR. DON'T * *APOLOGIZE FOR IT. DON'T TAKE CREDIT FOR IT. * **********************************************************************
alana@mhuxm.UUCP (whipple) (02/09/86)
What Brad brought up is traditionally a problem for the gay community. Unfortunately, institutions that we would like to be politically correct are in truth run by entrepreneurs attempting to make a living. Perhaps they have noble intentions, but they still must sell their products. Supposedly many businesses have been reluctant to advertise in the ADVOCATE due to its pink (now mottled) section. How can you sell a magazine to a limited target population except by appealing to its lowest common denominator, in this case, homoerotica? I also would think that if the publication is so enormously successful that it is the leading gay (probably mostly homosexual) publication in the state, it could afford financially and on the basis of its reputation to branch into less ephemeral matters than one's next lay. We should also consider that, probably, for a lot of people, this is their only exposure to gay people. Where else should they place their personal ads? One's baser instincts must be served before going on to more enlightened stuff. Alex
thoma@reed.UUCP (Ann Muir Thomas) (02/10/86)
The _Willamette Week_, Portland's yuppie/guppie alternative newspaper, has a lot of personal ads. Personally, I (as a female of usually heterosexual orientation) find the ads from gay men and lesbians to be less offensive than the ads from heterosexuals. Also, can anybody explain the rather large demand for bisexual women to join "threesomes" with married couples? Ann Muir Thomas ...tektronix!reed!thoma "We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." --The Pretenders
on@hpda.UUCP (Owen Rowley) (02/11/86)
In article <500@drutx.UUCP> bal@drutx.UUCP (LesebergB) writes: > I was looking at this week's issue of OUTFRONT, >Colorado's #1 gay publication, and it occured to me how such >things are giving gays a bad reputation. There are many ads for You make a judgement here that requires us to adopt your standards of good and bad and what constitutes a "bad reputation" >There are many ads for >X-rated theatres and bookstores, a leather bar ad, and the >PERSONNAL ADS. These personnal ads are very specific in what >these guys are looking for. I'm not saying that these ads should So, you find adds for sexually explicit media and PERSONNAL ADS with specific sexual desires spelled out to be of questionable taste and you think that "such things" make us all look "bad" You also find Leather Bars offensive by their existence? >I'm not saying that these ads should >be taken out or anything, but can't there be any positive gay >publications to show society we are not sex crazy 24 hours a day >(though some of us might be). This is "Colorado's #1" >publication. I see copies of it littered in the street. My >straight friends see it and they say, "How can this filth be #1 >?!?!?" "Your friends aren't like this." What you are revealing here is the fact that there is a marked difference in the culturally acceptable behavior of the Gay world and the BP (breeding population). I think that there are several factors involved heresome of which are not being addressed by your posting. Plainly, Sex and the explicit display of Sex is OK to a lot of Gay men, and its not to the BP. The "Family" role and the societal rules that govern it need strict control to maintain an even keel. The Gay role gives access to a more hedonic lifestyle, and I suspect that there is a lot of jealosy involved in the condemnation of our Gay culture by Non-Gays. Are Gay men any more Sex crazy than any other men ?? Do you honestly believe that there isn't just as much fucking around in the BP as there is in the Gay community... give me a break. I think that there are very few metroplolitan areas with a large enough Gay audience to support multiple Gay publications and that as a result you will find the widest spectrum of tastes being addressed in the average Gay publication. These Pub's also serve as the only outlet of Gay identity for many many men. Its not easy for a lot of Guys to "do anything" about being gay and so the fantasy of the "magazine lover" must suffice. Your whining friends can get validation and stimulation of their sexual preferance in a lot of places and a lot of ways. we are often given damn little choice of where to get ours. Personally I resent the BP attempting to dictate my moral choices . > Oh sure, it's fun to read, but it just gives the gay >society as a "whole" a bad picture, and misleading. In my home >country, Lincoln, Nebraska, the most popular publication was the >VOICE. This was a very attractive, magazine style newspaper with >regular columns and very good articles and ADS ! I am trying to >get a subscription out here for it, since it was a good source of >the news for the local gay scene there. I suspect that this reflects a higher level of intolerance for alternative lifestyle and the not so subtle pressure to "at least outwardly" conform or die. Here in the Bay Area we are fortunate to have a paper like the BAR (Bay Area Reporter) which has Lots of informative reporting and less sexually explicit content. However its often depressing to wade through 40 pages of how much we've been beat up in the last week. > I'd be interested if other communities have impressive >gay newspapers that are not so misleading as the sex rags >circulated in the Denver. Again I suggest that you look real closely at your own attitudes about Sex and being Gay, and your reasons for judging The Gay lifestyule the way you do. We have no need to apologise to anyone for being who and what we are, we have no need for social patterns that are designed to keep a Breeding Population stable, we have no need for moral indignation based on the dogmatic tabus of the Yahweh cults. We do need to discover our own standards and develop healthy attitudes that support our choises, we do need to stick up for our right to be different, we especially need to be steadfast in our determination to be treated as human beings with the same rights as everyone else. Don't buy the media lie that we are some kind of aberation, we are NOT.. Even those of us who like to go to leather Bars ;-) Lux .. on Owen Rowley hplabs!hpda!on
cycy@isl1.ri.cmu.edu (Christopher Young) (02/11/86)
Lets here it for hometown newspapers! I agree, many gay publications *do* make us, as a group, look bad. The vast majority are pornographic to one degree or another, and many of the rest at least have pretty raunchy ads. Even Christopher Street is tending to get more that way. And even if they don't have nudes, etc. the content of many of these magazines tends to weak, filled by collumns extolling the wonders of sex, etc. I could flame on this point, but I won't. (I will if I'm invited though). In fairness, I've got to admit that Christopher Street and the Advocate carry pretty good pieces sometimes. But it would be nice to have a magazine that was more devoted to non-sexual items like politics, events, etc. Anyway, I would recommend the newspaper from my hometown. It's not real big or anything (average 20 pages/issue, I think. 1/2 size newspaper format). It's called "Mom...Guess What!" and it's from Sacramento, California. The address is "MGW; 1400 S St., Suite 100; Sacramento, California 95814. The cost is $12/year. -- Chris.
joe@emacs.UUCP (Joe Chapman) (02/12/86)
<> [ Topic: dirty personals in gay publications and the notion that this makes us look like sex maniacs. ] It might be instructive to recall the response of a gay poet to being called a gay poet: ``What does this mean? That I like to write about sucking cock?'' he sputtered. ``Or is it that I exhibit the infamous `gay sensibility'?'' Gay people are people who exhibit romantic and sexual attraction to members of their own sex. This is the common denominator. One might reasonably expect a publication aimed at the gay community to contain a sexual element, and one might further expect people---gay or straight, male or female---who advertise in personal sections to employ a subtly different approach from midwestern teenagers looking for a date for the prom. For Christ's sake, I vote in every election, play the organ at church, give to the United Way, help little old ladies across the street, and do unusual things with my free time in the evenings, for which latter vice a majority of the citizens of this Republic would like to see me killed, imprisoned, quarantined, assaulted, subjected to Freudian analysis, or pitied. Guy Hocquenghem and others have pointed out that there has to be something more than the simple notion of sex between partners of the same gender which accounts for the absurd reaction of society most of us have encountered. I think that to argue that the primary common identity of gay people is something else is to participate in all of this madness. OK, it's good to talk about ``gay issues''---the infringements on civil rights, the menace of AIDS; it's good to have fun dishing Dynasty; it's good to patronize gay-owned establishments; it's good to talk about things other than sucking cock in net.motss. But it's not good to forget that gayness is fundamentally sexual, and that the other aspects we discuss here are a sort of political and cultural accretion. (Personal note: I'm leaving my company to become a wealthy consultant like Steve Dyer, and my participation on the net in the near future will be sporadic at best. (1) So I've gotten the last word. (2) It's been real.) Joe Chapman -- "We were kids. It was too early in cca!joe (pro tem.) the cultural matrix for actual screwing."