an incomplete timeline of sexual diversity - part 2
Here are a few more juicy dates on my sexuality timeline. First, though, one thing I forgot to mention last time… at the start of the Vanier lecture I made a point of explaining two things. One: that I’m a staunch feminist, and that my particular preferred flavour of feminism is the sex-positive kind, which I define as follows.
"While sometimes the social, political, economic and interpersonal circumstances in which sex takes place are not ideal, sex-positive feminism is feminism which incorporates the belief that at its basis, sex in its many forms is a good thing."
Two: that there’s a list of common issues that may be faced by people who fall into the bottom categories in Gayle Rubin’s sexual pyramid. Anyone who’s familiar with the queer coming-out process has probably heard of, or can easily imagine, most of these, but I believe they’re common to most sexual minorities rather than being particular to those on the LGBT spectrum. They include prejudice, violence, job loss, child custody loss, medicalization, pathologization, self-hatred, depression, drug use, higher risk for suicide, rejection from cultural and religious communities, etc. Of course, there are also advantages to being there: self-knowledge and self-discovery, freedom from mainstream constraints, love, sense of community/tribe and tradition, support, friendship, potentially progressive political views, and of course satisfying sex!
On to the dates… this time with some Canadiana starting to appear.
1928 Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness was published, with a foreword by Havelock Ellis on the topic of inversion and how the phenomenon should not be cause for hatred or offense. The book was banned. It is still in print today, and considered the first lesbian novel of all time.
1929 On October 18, women were finally declared "persons" under Canadian law. The historic legal victory was due to the persistence of five Alberta women — Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney and Henrietta Muir Edwards. The battle started in 1916. From Murphy’s very first day as a judge, lawyers had challenged her rulings because she is not a "person" under Canadian law.
1948 Alfred C. Kinsey published his first study – Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male – and in 1953 followed it up with Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female. The books were dense scientific text, the result of thousands of in-depth interviews all over the USA, and the information therein blew the lid of America’s ideas about sexual purity. The movie Kinsey (released in 2005) still upsets people today. Kinsey created the Kinsey Scale, where 0 is completely heterosexual, 6 is completely homosexual, and his belief was that most people fall somewhere in between.
1948 - 1959 John Willie published Bizarre, the first North American SM and fetish-oriented magazine. It contained letters from subscribers, art that’s still typical of SM outfits and fetish imagery today, and such gems as bondage photos guised as jiu-jitsu “don’t let this happen to you!” ads. (I just got my hands on a hardbound boxed-set reprint of the entire series, and it is indeed bizarre… and thoroughly fascinating.) The magazine’s publication coincided with the development of gay male SM communities in San Francisco, a major port city where many ex-military men settled after the war. These communities were often based on military codes, biker groups and strict hierarchy.
1951 The Mattachine Society (the USA’s first noted gay rights group) was founded. By 1960 it had only 230 members.
1955 The Daughters of Bilitis (the USA’s first noted lesbian rights group) was founded. By 1960 it had only 110 members.
1967 On December 21 the young Pierre Trudeau, acting as Justice Minister, introduced his controversial Omnibus bill in the House of Commons. The bill called for massive changes to the Criminal Code of Canada. Trudeau made an appeal for the decriminalization of homosexual acts performed in private, telling CBC TV reporters (in a now-famous quote) "there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation." You go, girl.
April 12th, 2007 at 2:07 am
So I want to say at the start sorry about the proposition. I hope you get that if I actually thought you would say yes I would have taken a different approach. I suppose I asked the way I did because part of me wanted the online verbal spanking & humiliation I received.
Don’t get me wrong I would still like to meet you. And of course I would still very much like to be your sub, or girl, or bitch, or whatever works for you. On the other hand I am doubting the possibility of every being anything more then an online fan, Who knows perhaps you will shock me. I did try to add you as a friend on friendster tonight. Perhaps online friends is a good place to start.
My back up plan to being your online friend is for you to hurry up and write a book so I can wait in line to get an autograph and perhaps a photo at your knees. My suggestion for a book or at least a really good article in a magazine is a book with the following title A mostly straight guy’s guide to dating, mating, & relating to Queer Girls. You could include a section in each of the following; the benefits (perhaps being dressed up as a girl, being on the receiving end of penetration), things you need to know (which would be the idiots guide to not being a male pig), places to meet them, how to approach them…etc.
Finally, I don’t know if you take Bog request but here goes anyway.
1 Why do you think Oprah seems so clueless about the fact some/most people are to at least some extent bisexual? Do you think she is sexually fulfilled? Do you think she might be repressing part of her sexuality do to the sexual abuse she often discusses?
2 Discuss the Idea that Prostitution is a form of violence against the client.
For and Against Please.
3In your previous blogs you have for lack of a better word at the moment “daydreamed” about having a penis, specifically working male genitals.
I am curious if you really could have a standard set of male genitals would you actually want it?
I know from my point of view (a male with penis) I think you would be giving up a lot more then you would be getting in return. For example, access to women only places and events (and no not just for the sex and yes partly for the sex vs. how to say this, well a hassle free strap-on. (I imagine you will chew me up over the wording and phrasing of this question but you get the just)