Category: Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality

The purpose of this portrait series was to investigate the way power relations fluctuate when assuming roles—the Photographer, the Subject, the Viewer—that are defined and attached to the medium of photography and how that affects the results.  I’ve chosen two poses: in the first the Subject looks at the camera and, indirectly, at the Viewer; […]

The Peiss piece “Transformation of Transsexual Jorgensen” poses a question that Cal in Middlesex must answer for himself. How xan people who are different be “cured”? And of course, we must ask ourselves not how they can be “cured,” but rather if they should be — and if the word “cure” should be used in […]

Within the Bounds of the Heterosexual Imagination I thought that Serlin’s essay Christine Jorgensen and the Cold War Closet drew some interesting parallels with Middlesex. Interestingly, the essay makes the assertion that Jorgensen was rejected by the general public after it was discovered that she was not a physical “hermaphrodite” who made the choice between […]

“Can transvestites be cured?” asked Time in an article reporting on Christine Jorgensen (Peiss, 375). If the article were about Cal, perhaps the question asked would be: Can hermaphrodites be cured? Within these questions lies the assumption that these things – these genders – need to be cured. “In some cases of transvestitism, as in […]

Weeks ago, we had touched on Foucault’s ideas of bio-power, but I feel it is only this week that these ideas are being played out, in primary sources and fiction.  The last time I talked about bio-power was in relation to WWI and the “Keeping Fit to Fight” campaigns that promoted safer sexual activity in […]

Beyond the Pleasure Principle First, in the document “Policing Public Sex in a Gay Theater, 1995” (Peiss, 454), I found the degree of detail mandated quite interesting.  Not simply “what act,” which would be the only legitimate question in regards to sanitation, but full bodied descriptions, proximity of the voyeur, and the lighting.  If an […]

The Beauty Remains “God has left the building.” That seems to be one of the underlying themes of Angels in America. The Angels are in uproar, their prophet – much like the biblical Moses standing before that little burning bush, like Jonah at the port city, convinced he can outrun infinity – spurns them, the […]

Once again the definition of the label “homosexual” is questioned and placed on the examining table in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. “Roy Cohn is not a homosexual.  Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man, Henry, who fucks around with guys.” (Millenium Approaches, 46)  This quote is part of a striking dialogue between Roy Cohn, a […]

Families with Fluid Boundaries The way power was used in Ronald Bayer’s essay, AIDS and the Bathhouse Controversy was quite interesting.  Essentially, the question was whether the San Francisco government could control the private lives of gay individuals in the name of public health.  As stated in the essay, the criminalization of homosexuality by the […]

Response to Angels in America “Roy: Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on labels, that you believe they mean what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with, but they don’t tell you that” (Millennium Approaches, Act 1, […]