GLR March-April 2024

March-April 2024 SITES OF SAN FRANCISCO GLR k

I GNACIO D ARNAUDE Figures of the Bay Area W ILLIAM B ENEMANN The City Called Capturing Women at the Millennium E MILY L.Q UINT F REEMAN November 1978: The Agony & the Irony J IM V AN B USKIRK 100 Years of Togetherness to Yone Naguchi C HLOE S HERMAN

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The Gay & Lesbian Review March–April 2024 • VOLUME XXXI, NUMBER 2 WORLDWIDE

Editor-in-Chief and Founder R ICHARD S CHNEIDER J R . WORLDWIDE The Gay & Lesbian Review ® PO Box 180300, Boston, MA 02118

C ONTENTS

Sites of San Francisco

Literary Editor M ARTHA E. S TONE Poetry Editor D AVID B ERGMAN Associate Editors S AM D APANAS P AUL F ALLON J EREMY F OX M ICHAEL S CHWARTZ Contributing Writers R OSEMARY B OOTH D ANIEL A. B URR C OLIN C ARMAN A NNE C HARLES A LFRED C ORN A LLEN E LLENZWEIG C HRIS F REEMAN P HILIP G AMBONE M ATTHEW H AYS H ILARY H OLLADAY A NDREW H OLLERAN I RENE J AVORS J OHN R. K ILLACKY C ASSANDRA L ANGER

F EATURES

Figures of the Bay Area 12 I GNACIO D ARNAUDE

The gay artists who stormed the Abstract Expressionist ramparts

Butterflies Caught in a Web 15 W ILLIAM B ENEMANN

San Francisco called to Yone Naguchi, a 19th-c. artist from Japan

“Outcasts and artists flocked to the city.” 20 C HLOE S HERMAN

Hilary Holladay queries a San Francisco photographer

One Hundred Years of Togetherness 23 J IM V AN B USKIRK

A chronicle of San Francisco LGBT firsts and bests, 1869–1969

Lesbians Against Incarceration 27 C AIT P ARKER

A late-century campaign to end to the prison system as we know it

Carson McCullers’ “Imaginary Friends” 30 A NDREW H OLLERAN

That was her husband’s term for the many women in her life

R E V I E W S

P OEMS & D EPARTMENTS G UEST O PINION — How Russian Media Demonize LGBT People 5 D IANA S ADRETDINOVA C ORRESPONDENCE 6 I N M EMORIAM — Three People Who Made a Difference 7 R ICHARD S CHNEIDER J R . I N M EMORIAM — Amber Hollibaugh, Human Rights Activist 8 J OHN D’E MILIO BTW 10 R ICHARD S CHNEIDER J R . H ISTORY M EMO — November 1978: The Agony and the Irony 18 E MILY L. Q UINT F REEMAN P OEM — “Pleasure” 22 A MEEN A NIMASHAUN P OEM — “While I Slept” 26 J OAN L ARKIN P OEM — “Miriam Searches Me Clean with Mediterranean Vowels” 32 A SHLEY S OPHIA C ULTURAL C ALENDAR 47 A RT M EMO — Ciao! Magazine: The Gay DolceVita of the ’70s 49 F RANK S ERAFINO Assotto Saint — Sacred Spells: Collected Works 36 D ALE B OYER Elyssa Maxx Goodman — Glitter and Concrete 37 V ERNON R OSARIO B RIEFS 38 Nick Mauss and Angela Miller — Body Language 40 A LLEN E LLENZWEIG Andrew Sutherland — Queer Opera 41 P HILIP G AMBONE Stephen M. Silverman — Sondheim: His Life, His Shows, His Legacy 43 R OBERT A LLEN P APINCHAK Richard Blanco — Homeland of My Body: New and Selected Poems 44 A LAN C ONTRERAS Hannah Levene — Greasepaint 45 A LLISON A RMIJO Darius Stewart — Be Not Afraid of My Body: A Lyrical Memoir 45 C HARLES G REEN Lucas Hilderbrand — The Bars Are Ours 46 M ATTHEW H AYS Lost Boys: Amos Badertscher’s Baltimore (art exhibition) 48 S TEVEN F. D ANSKY Bradley Cooper, director — Maestro (film) 50 C OLIN C ARMAN KazRowe— Liberated: The Radical Art and Life of Claude Cahun 33 H ANK T ROUT Lois W. Banner — Ideal Beauty: The Life and Times of Greta Garbo 34 C ASSANDRA L ANGER

A NDREW L EAR F ELICE P ICANO J AMES P OLCHIN J EAN R OBERTA V ERNON R OSARIO Contributing Artist C HARLES H EFLING Publisher S TEPHEN H EMRICK Webmaster B OSTON W EB G ROUP WebEditor A LLISON A RMIJO ______________________________ Board of Directors

A RT C OHEN ( CHAIR ) E DUARDO F EBLES R OBERT H ARDMAN S TEPHEN H EMRICK H ILARY H OLLADAY D AVID L A F ONTAINE J IM J ACOBS A NDREW L EAR

R ICHARD S CHNEIDER , J R . ( PRESIDENT ) T HOMAS Y OUNGREN ( TREASURER ) S TEWART C LIFFORD (C HAIR EMER .) W ARREN G OLDFARB ( SR . ADVISOR EMER .)

The Gay & Lesbian Review/ WORLDWIDE ® (formerly The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, 1994-1999) is published bimonthly (six times per year) by The Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational corporation located in Boston, Mass. Subscription rates : U.S.: $41.70 per year (6 issues). Canada and Mexico: $51.70(US). All other countries: $61.70(US). All non-U.S. copies are sent via air mail. Back issues available for $12 each. All correspondence is sent in a plain envelope marked “G&LR.” ISSN: 1077: 6591 © 2024 by Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc. All rights reserved. W EBSITE : www.GLReview.org • S UBSCRIPTIONS : 847-504-8893 • A DVERTISING : 617-421-0082 • S UBMISSIONS : Editor@GLReview.org

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Springtime in the City: ‘Sites of San Francisco’ FROM THE EDITOR

W HAT’S SURPRISING is that we haven’t done a “San Francisco” issue before this in light of the city’s cen trality to LGBT history and culture. I believe the only other “city” theme we’ve done was an issue on New York (July Aug. 2015), which I always intended to balance with one on San Francisco. I say “balance” because there has always been a lively rivalry between NYC and the West Coast over the origins of the LGBT movement, with San Francisco making a legiti mate claim to harboring a vibrant gay culture and an incipient political movement long before Stonewall. Some pieces in this issue underscore this point, presenting moments in San Francisco’s past going back to the 19th century. I think “moments” is the right word, as the best we can do here is to zero in on a few episodes in the city’s genuinely long and storied past as an LGBT mecca, art colony, sex paradise, gay rights cauldron, and possibly even the “epicenter” of LGBT life in America, as one source claimed. In any case, San Francisco was a hotbed of gay activity soon after the Gold Rush as all those ’49ers piled into the area, and its rapid rise as a seaport made it a bazaar for commerce of all kinds. In his spotlight history of the city, Jim Van Buskirk re ports that there was already a Tenderloin District in 1869, and the city’s first gay bar, The Dash—featuring cross-dressing wait ers performing sex acts in booths—opened in 1908. By then, San Francisco was an international port of call for people on the

move in search of adventure or opportunity. That would describe one Yone Noguchi, who arrived from Japan in 1893 and, as told here by William Benemann, went on to become a significant poet in his own right and an inspiration for writer Charles War ren Stoddard, with whom he carried on a torrid long-distance affair for many years. (It was eventually consummated.) Our next stop is the art scene in the postwar era, when San Francisco was a hotbed of alternative artists and movements— alternatives, that is, to the Abstract Expressionism that ruled New York. Ignacio Darnaude presents two artists who spear headed the Bay Area Figurative Movement, Paul Wonner and Theophilus Brown, whose paintings of recognizable human fig ures included many male nudes. San Francisco itself is a con stant presence in their work, which is full of watery backdrops. Decades later, the women of San Francisco were the target of photographer Chloe Sherman’s lens. In an interview, she tells of “the queer cultural renaissance” of the 1980s and ’90s. Finally, there’s a History Memo by Emily L. Quint Free man titled “The Agony and the Irony.” The agony refers to the heart-wrenching assassination of Harvey Milk in late Novem ber 1978. The irony is that earlier that month the state of Cali fornia had roundly defeated the infamous Briggs Amendment, which would have barred LGBT teachers from public schools. Milk had joined in the euphoria, and now this. R ICHARD S CHNEIDER J R .

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How Russian Media Demonize LGBT People GUEST OPINION / INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM

prohibited medical support for transgender transition. In re sponse to criticism, the bill was tightened. The final version stripped transgender people of the right to adopt or have cus tody of children and annulled marriages performed by trans gender people. Shortly before this law was passed, federal stations began broadcasting news of a discriminatory nature, and they have continued. The tone of these stories is always the same: sneer ingly incredulous, denying the possibility of the existence of such people in Russian society and in nature in general. The ar gument is always the same: that women and men have certain primary sexual characteristics, full stop. They find a few scien tific-sounding experts, i.e., conservative foreigners with opin ions about transgender people, and cite a few sources like The New York Post or Newsmax. The padding of the plot is always queerly exaggerated: clips of gay pride parades to create the ef fect that these parades happen every day in the U.S. and Europe. The only thing we can hope for is that the media don’t make too many stupid mistakes, and that the work of Putin’s propa ganda machine doesn’t hurt too many innocent people. Fortu nately, the times we live in still give LGBT people in Russia access to alternative online media and to very important infor mation that cannot be found in the vacuum inside the country. Diana Sadretdinova is a freelance journalist and volunteer for the Coming Out group.

D IANA S ADRETDINOVA I N THE 1990s and 2000s, there was something queer about Russian television. Images of LGBT people were nothing out of the ordinary on Russian TV or other pop culture media. There were clips of Shura, the program Full Fashion with Sergey Zverev, songs by the bands Nochnye Snaipery and Reflex. Transvestite culture was also extremely popular, albeit in a humorous context. At its peak was the almost sacred figure of Verka Serduchka, a Ukrainian artist. Evening shows dealt with issues such as the lives of transgender people and male prostitution. Since 2014, however, Russian TV has turned LGBT people into the regime’s main enemy. Viewers are fed a steady stream of political talk shows with guests espousing hate group ideologies from morning to night. After the ban against “homosexual propaganda” was enacted in 2013, discussion of LGBT issues was largely silenced. A phrase borrowed from American conservatives, “traditional val ues,” started to be used as a way to separate certain groups of people. Following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the discussion of LGBT issues became part of an effort to divert at tention from the war. Gay content that was once frowned upon began to flow from all of the state channels. Vladimir Putin him self entered the discussion, referring to transgender people as “transformers.” The statistics show that suicide is several times more frequent for LGBT people than for straight people. Stories that go beyond the bounds of reason have become the norm on federal stations. Take the summary of one of the news stories: “Russian special forces destroyed a ‘dangerous gang of Ukronazi terrorists.’” Among the weapons they found were satanic cult items and LGBT attributes. This claim would be manifestly ridiculous if it were not reported on one of the main stations of the country as serious news. One of Russia’s best-known propagandists, Yevgeny Kiselyov, suggests bury ing gay men’s hearts in the ground after a traffic accident, so that they don’t go to those in need of transplants. In the pro gram Besogon , Oscar-winning director Nikita Mikhalkov com pares gay parades to those of zoophiliacs. It is hard to find a more eloquent speaker in the art of in sulting people than the popular favorite Vladimir Solovyov. He tries to shine in this field, following and commenting on every event in the life of the global LGBT community, all the while chanting holy scriptures with dexterity. Or there are the state backed journalists Margarita Simonyan and Olga Skabeeva, women who could have become respected journalists, but who now promote “family values” and condemn the gay community. The most important issue at the moment is still the trans gender ban that was enacted last summer. It prohibits necessary medical procedures for transgender people, even those who fall under internationally recognized standards of care. The law also authorizes surgery on intersex children without their consent or medical necessity. The law has been widely criticized by human rights advocates, LGBT activists, and the medical community. Human Rights Watch described it as a violation of human rights. The original version of the Transgender Transition Ban

March–April 2024

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Correspondence

shaking comments suggest ing that something sexual was going on (always news to ne). For example, my stone-and-gold leaf sculp ture The Wisdom Seeker was created to be a unisex spiritual entity and was se lected for display at Capi tol Grounds in Olympia, Washington. It wasn’t until the suits from the govern ment strolled through the park and brought it to the attention of the Parks Art

I just wanted to send a thank you to Mr. Schneider for his words. As the victim men tioned in the article [having been raped weekly by the perpetrator], the events sur rounding my childhood were very difficult. As well, the events surrounding the lawsuit [against Steven Barnes] were also difficult, but in different ways. A quick update: the case was eventually dismissed by the Mississippi Supreme Court, citing a lack of evidence. While that may be true, I can say that there was DNA found in his former office. While I am under the impression that that DNA did be long to me, it was never stated in the affir mative that this was the case. Although he did not go to prison for what he did, he will deal with the things that he did to me in dif ferent ways. Steven Barnes and his family—his wife Sherry, their daughter Makaela, and their son Colin—were all permanently relocated to Guam. There they have been living their lives as missionaries, preaching the gospel or whatever the hell it is that they do. They’re not allowed to come back to the U.S. They will never be given a chance to live the privileged life that they once had. It may not be prison, but close enough. After I stepped forward and told my story about Steven Barnes, the church that was at tached to my school was permanently frac tured and split into two churches. The new church, led by a childhood friend of mine named Rev. Greg Hill, was founded because they believed that what I said was true. They were formed to create a safe place for people of their denomination. I was not the first child to come forward for that place, and I probably will not be the last. While no one did officially come forward to report Steven Barnes as I had, there were other victims. I know because they reached out to me. For a variety of reasons, they weren’t able to go public in the way that I did. Whether they were protecting their mothers who were still church members or worried that coming forward would disrupt the lives they had built, I understand and re spect their decisions. I am very appreciative to Mr. Schneider for what he said and simply for reporting this story. I’m grateful for finding this after ten years of perspective have opened up. It’s little write-ups such as this that help to af firm victims and survivors that coming for ward can result in a positive response. That should be enough to help a majority of sur vivors to step forward. Jeff White, Northern Mississippi

TheBoys ’ Long March to Broadway To the Editor: In the Nov.-Dec. 2023 issue, the photo graph on page 33 is labeled: “A scene from the original Broadway production (1970) of The Boys in the Band. ”However, the play did not run on Broadway until 2018. The 1970 production played Off Broadway at Theater Four for 1001 performances. That was a long time ago, but I didn’t want a phalanx of young queers to be thinking that in 1970 Broadway had the imaginative room to accommodate such a ground- break ing play, when in reality no one with a wal let wanted to make that happen or believed Broadway could support it. Their assump tions of super knowledge kept them from making the fists-ful of money that the Off Broadway investors ultimately reaped (some ofwhomare still living off that money). Craig Lucas, Putnam Valley, NY Fantasy of a Pubic Sculpture To the Editor: Regarding the BTW item titled “An Eye for an Anus” in the Nov.-Dec. 2023 issue: as a professional artist and sculptor, what I observe in Phillip K. Smith’s sculpture is the unique, cheerful design of this wonder ful, inviting piece. Of all places, one would not expect hip Palm Springs to host such a ridiculous controversy, forcing the artist to change the design! Throughout my career, some of my sculptures have been subjected to head

Department that anyone questioned it. Standing at the back side of the sculpture, one of the suits asked the art director: “Tell me what you see?” “A Robed figure,” she replied. “You don’t see the giant penis? ” he asked. Her reply was priceless: “Giant penis? I suppose you also see Mickey Mouse in the clouds.” Praise her for being an intelligent art director and for demanding that the sculpture remain in place. She spared me a lawsuit had they taken it down. Leon White, Seattle, WA Ten Years Later, Vic ti mina BTW Surfaces To the Editor: My name is Jeff White, and I am the sub ject of one of your articles. The article was written by one Richard Schneider and was published in 2014 [Nov.-Dec. issue, a BTW item] and titled “Putting the X in Ex-Gay Therapy.” I was not aware of this article until today, nearly ten years later. That said,

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IN MEMORIAM

Remembering Three Who Made a Difference R ICHARD S CHNEIDER J R . W E CONTINUE here a G&LR tradition, namely Martha E. Stone’s annual tribute to notable LGBT people who died during the previous year. But rather

in the Bible Belt, albeit one who was destined for college and a life far away from there. Second, she was an early Boomer who came of age in the era of antiwar protests and countercultural tides and especially feminism and LGBT liberation, two move ments of the 1970s that greatly influenced her life and work. That was the decade in which Pratt came out as a lesbian and left her husband and two children to pursue a career as a writer and activist. In 1977, she cofounded WomanWrites, a conference for feminist writers, and, in 1984, she cofounded LIPS, a lesbian affinity group based in Washington, D.C. Her first book of poetry, The Sound of One Fork , came out in 1981, followed by several others, including Crime Against Nature in 1990. She also wrote a steady stream of essays on issues of gen der, same-sex love, and LGBT liberation. Her 1995 book S/HE explored her intense, twenty-year relationship with novelist Leslie Feinberg ( Stone Butch Blues ). A poem by Pratt that ran in TheG&LR (March-April 2007) is about a suburban married man who carries on a secret gay life in the city, which begins: “Nail polish off, PATH jacket on, he’s ready to leave behind/ the clothes that fit his secret self, the peo ple who know him weekends.” Her poem in March-April 2004 mourns the loss of gay men to AIDS, switching the focus from the U.S. to Africa, where she sees an “Anglo-American/ con glomerate chief executive watching men’s bodies piled/ on one side of the scales, the price of gold rising on the other.” C HARLES S ILVERSTEIN , who died on January 30, 2023, at the age of 87, was a psychiatrist who became an activist after the Stonewall Riots and used his professional standing to make a difference when it counted. In the early 1970s, homosexuality was still listed as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association, which sanctioned the use of cruel and invasive methods for “curing” homosexuals. Dr. Silverstein was among a handful of professionals who spoke out against the APA’s po sition, notably at a 1973 national conference that became a wa tershed for change. By the following year, homosexuality had been delisted from the APA’s all-important Diagnostic and Sta tistical Manual . Of the many books that he published, the first was co-au thored with Edmund White: The Joy of Gay Sex , in 1977, an il lustrated guide to sexual positions and possibilities. His other books include Man to Man: Gay Couples in America (1982) and Gays, Lesbians and Their Therapists: Studies in Psy chotherapy (1991). In 1976, he was the founding editor-in chief of the Journal of Homosexuality , the first scholarly journal on this topic in the U.S., which is still going strong. Dr. Silverstein was a friend of this magazine who occasion ally offered advice and counsel on psychiatric issues. He was interviewed for the March-April 2012 issue, whose theme was LGBT psychology, in a piece titled “Stopping the Madness.” In it, he discussed the strategies that allowed a small group of gay psychiatrists to shame the APA into ending its policy of stigma tizing LGBT people as mentally ill. In later years, he helped guide the APA to a position of actively opposing “therapies” aimed at changing people’s sexual orientation.

than try to do justice to the many noteworthy individuals who left us in 2023, let me focus on three who were figures of na tional importance and renown: Minnie Bruce Pratt, Ned Rorem, and Charles Silverstein—all three of whom contributed to this magazine at various points over the years. Please note that this issue also includes an obit for Amber Hollibaugh, and previous issues have run expanded obits for Michael Denneny, Doris Grumbach, Robert Patrick, and Urvashi Vaid. N ED R OREM , who died on November 18, 2022, at the age of 99, was an American composer whose œuvre includes operas and orchestral works, though he was best known for his songs, of which there are over 500. While not a fan of Modernism and atonal music—he assailed its exponents as the “serial kill ers”—his music was highly inventive in its own right. For ex ample, his AirMusic , which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1976, limited each movement to a specific combination of instruments. His best-known opera was a 2005 rendition of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town . Of his three numbered sym phonies, the Third, from 1958, is still performed. Unlike many composers, Rorem was also a wonderful writer, producing treatises on music history and an impressive output of memoirs. We may wrestle with the question of whether instrumental music can be “gay,” but Rorem’s writ ings remove all doubt and provide an amazingly honest ac count of the life of a sexually active gay man long before Stonewall, much of it spent in Paris as a young man before his return to the U.S. in 1957. The books of memoirs spanned forty years, starting with Paris Diary in 1966 and ending with Fac ing the Night in 2006. (The title of his Final Diary of 1974 proved premature.) For all his sexual explorations, he spent most of his adult life with his partner James Holmes, with whom he lived in New York City and Nantucket. In the year 2000, Ned Rorem wrote three original articles for The G&LR —quite a coup for this magazine!—which ranged across a huge swath of musical history and culture. The subheadings of the first essay make this point: “What does Music Mean?”; “Music and Politics”; “American Song at the Millennium”; and “Aaron’s Songs at the Centennial.” The sec ond essay, titled “Music and Society,” considered the position of women and minorities in classical music and the state of composition at that time. Among the many issues covered in the third essay is a meditation on whether a “gay sensibility” can be discerned in music and the other arts. M INNIE B RUCE P RATT , known primarily as a poet, left us on July 2, 2023, at the age of 76. She was born in Selma, Alabama, in 1946—two facts that underscore the accident of time and place. First, she came from the Deep South—Selma, no less— and all that that implied for a middle-class white girl growing up

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IN MEMORIAM

Amber Hollibaugh, Human Rights Activist J OHN D’E MILIO

Words flowed out of Amber, and her message was clear: “You have a right to be angry,” she shouted. “What happened was a miscarriage of justice. ... Let me see your rage!” The crowd began to explode. Windows in City Hall were smashed, and soon a row of police cars went up in flames. The rest of that night is a blur for me. I returned to the Castro. The police fol lowed and the violence they unleashed was terrifying. But through it all, I remember thinking: “That woman was amaz ing. I want her in my life.” Our paths kept crossing. I visited Modern Times for snip pets of conversation. The Lesbian and Gay History Project launched that summer, and we were both at several meetings. They organized a public forum on the history of the queer com munity’s relationship with police, and Amber and I were on the roster. The event’s title was “Spontaneous Combustion” and, when Amber spoke, it felt like the packed auditorium might act out the title! Finally, after many encounters in public settings, we planned a Saturday breakfast together. We ate and talked. Leav ing the restaurant, we kept talking. Hours later, we were still talking as Amber walked backward down the hill, the physical distance growing, until we were finally out of earshot. Those ten hours of conversation launched a friendship that continued for over forty years. We overlapped in New York in the early 1980s and then again for two glorious years in the 2000s, when

I FIRST MET Amber Hollibaugh in 1979, when I spent several months in San Francisco doing research for what became Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities . My first weekend there I was on a panel on gay and lesbian history or ganized by the Radical History Network. Such events were rare in 1979. One of those in the audience was a tall, imposing blonde named Amber. She told me she worked at Modern Times, a bookstore run by a left-wing collective, and that I should come by. The bookstore was not far from the Castro, and a few days later, when I walked in, she was at the counter reading Jeffrey Weeks’ pioneering book Coming Out , one of the first LGBT narrative histories. We talked for a bit, but cus tomers needed her attention, so I left. The following Monday, the verdict came down in the trial of Dan White for the assassination of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. He received the lightest possible sentence for two cold-blooded murders, and the call immediately went out to as semble at City Hall to protest. The plaza in front of it was packed when I arrived. Speakers addressed us—the two I re member were Harry Britt and Sally Gearhart—and all, without exception, urged us to stay calm. Harvey would want us to be peaceful, they said. And then this tall, imposing blonde came to the podium.

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Amber worked in Chicago. But mostly it was a long-distance relationship, connecting at national conferences like Creating Change and on my trips to my hometown of New York. Through these decades, our conversation never ended. That Saturday in San Francisco, a major topic was the Briggs Initia tive which, the year before, had launched the biggest organizing campaign that queer folks had seen. Amber described making her way through the small communities of northern California

she plunged into the fight against it. She worked for the NYC Commission on Human Rights combatting AIDS discrimination and for Gay Men’s Health Crisis, where she created the first les bian AIDS project. She was a staffer at the National LGBTQ Task Force. She advanced queer aging issues at Chicago’s Howard Brown Health Center. For years, she directed Queers for Eco nomic Justice—one of the few LGBT organizations that recog nized the impact of class oppression on the lives of many queer people. Amber always managed in her ac

and the Central Valley, engaging in con versation with countless individuals who had never met a lesbian before. For this guy who had lived his whole life in NY and had a large queer community around him, I was awed by the courage of this remarkable dyke. We discussed many other things as well, topics that we never stopped talk ing about. We talked about the state of the left in our ever-more conservative political environment; about our move

tivism to “say out loud what everyone had agreed not to notice.” She constantly called for a “new revolution” that in cluded the sexual desires that so many experience with shame and feel forced to keep secret. She insisted that we em brace “our most dangerous desires” and “fight for a world that values human sex ual possibility without extracting a terri ble human price.” She strove “to create

Amber Hollibaugh. Courtesy Nat’l LGBTQ Task Force.

ment’s evolution from lesbian and gay into LGBTQ and the ten dency toward respectability that drove us both crazy; about the increasingly conservative sexual politics of what once was a liberation movement; and about the class and racial boundaries that many movement organizations refused to acknowledge. Through all these years, Amber remained a bold and tireless activist, translating talk into working for social justice. Arriving in New York just as AIDS began devastating our community,

a movement willing to live the politics of sexual danger in order to create a culture of human hope.” I, and so many others, will never forget her bold, daring, and inspiring work and the smile, laughter, and hugs that kept spirits high even in times that seemed desperate. Rest in power, Amber Hollibaugh. John D’Emilio, author of Queer Legacies: Stories from Chicago’s LGBTQ Archives, is professor of history at the Univ. of Illinois, Chicago.

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BTW Revela ti on Fact: Lesbians in the U.S. earn twenty percent more on average than do heterosexual women. However unexpected the news, this disparity goes back quite a few years and has never been fully explained. Sure, lesbians are less likely than straight women to have children, who can be a drag on women’s careers. Feminists have always maintained that men are the problem, as they contribute much less to household maintenance than do their female partners, and studies show that lesbian cou ples do tend to divide the housework much more equally. Nev ertheless, even after controlling for these factors, according to researcher Aria Velz, lesbians still come out ahead. It turns out lesbians are better educated than their straight sisters, and they’re more likely to live in cities. While shattering any lin gering stereotype of a lesbian as someone who drives a pickup in the exurbs, this fact challenges the narrative of lesbians as an oppressed minority, or turns it into one of overcoming barriers. Money for Nothing Wayne Besen is back with new research on an old exposé, one of many in which he exposed “conversion therapy,” aka the “ex-gay movement,” as a cultic, money-mak ing operation that attracts “the shadiest of charlatans.” This one goes back to 2009, when one Jayson Graves was forced out of

his position of leadership in the ex-gay hierarchy (is it literally a pyramid scheme?). Graves was an uber leader in the move ment with a devoted following—until he was stripped of his li cense to practice by Colorado’s State Board of Registered Psychotherapists for sexually assaulting a client. Doubtless this was only the tip of the iceberg; reports have surfaced of Graves’ seductive manner when treating clients, his use of “touch ther apy” in his practice, not to mention his penchant for posing

shirtless. One can easily see how the position of head shrink for a troop of gay youths struggling with their sexuality could provide the ideal setup for a not-so-ex-gay nar cissist like Graves. Patients have been forming crushes on their eld erly analysts since Freud, so imag ine the personal dynamic when both parties have a history of same

Jayson Graves

sex attraction and the therapist is actually quite hot. Whether Graves ever “cured” anyone of homosexuality by this method is unknown; presumably he got his paycheck either way. Straight Porn and Reality The Daily Wire ’s right-wing superstar Michael Knowles advanced his war on porn by charging that Pornhub is actively trying to turn cisgender, straight men into gay and trans people. “Stop looking at porn, if for no other rea son than the senior writers here are saying they want to make you gay and trans,” he stated flatly. We won’t ask the age-old

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question of how much porn Knowles would have had to watch to know that this was going on. Come to think of it, it’s not en tirely clear what is going on. The closest he comes to explaining his theory is a soundbite: “E XCLUSIVE : Top Pornhub staff admits to inserting ‘gay’ and ‘trans’ themes into mainstream porn to ‘convert’ straight men.” So… that’s all it would take? Again one is amazed by the fragility of heterosexuality. But the problem here is a deeper one: by its nature heterosexual porn for men in cludes a male sexual organ in full flagrante. Presumably the viewer can avert his eyes or perhaps fantasize that the appendage is his own. And yet, there it is, stubbornly thrusting away, surely an object of interest if not of arousal. The absurdity of Knowles’ claim is that nothing could possibly be “inserted” into the scene that isn’t already there. If hetero porn can turn straight men gay, it’s only because they like what they see. There Goes the Neighborhood There could be any number of reasons for painting your apartment building to look like a gay flag. Realtor Ryan Basye of Omaha claims he did it at the be hest of his three daughters, though he admits his next-door neighbor’s homophobic jokes and slurs may have had some that in Omaha you’re free to paint your building to look like a gay pride parade (here in Boston’s South End the color of our shutters is legally restricted); whether one should do so is an other matter entirely. You be the judge. Tick, Tick... Two stories of collapse deserve a brief mention: CPAC (C ONSERVATIVE P OLITICAL A CTION C ONFERENCE )—or more correctly its parent the American Conservative Union (ACU)—is reportedly “imploding” due to accusations of sex ual harassment against ACU chair Matt Schlapp. Three men have reported a sexual overture by Schlapp, including one who stated: “Matt Schlapp grabbed my junk and pummeled it at length.” Schlapp may still be hanging on, but multiple ACU board members have resigned, and the org. is described as “a shell of its former commanding presence.” T HE POWERFUL M OMS FOR L IBERTY organization seems to be on the eve of destruction following revelations that its founder, and her husband, are involved in interlocking sex scandals. The group has spearheaded efforts to take over school boards across the country and to purge LGBT books from school libraries, so its collapse would be big news. Founder Bridget Ziegler has resigned under a cloud, though it’s her husband Christian Ziegler who stands accused of rape and faces prison time. As luck would have it, Christian is, or was, the Chairman of the Republican Party in Florida, which is described as demoral ized following his departure. Meanwhile, Bridget has admit ted that she, her husband, and her husband’s accuser were involved in three-way sex over a year ago. Wow. thing to do with it. But whether his motive was revenge or happy kids, Basye says he hasn’t had any complaints. Still, this could be one of those times when politics and æsthetics collide. It’s wonderful

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ESSAY

Figures of the Bay Area I GNACIO D ARNAUDE

A TRAVELING EXHIBITION titled Breaking theRules , now at Memphis’ Dixon Museum, presents an enlightening narrative about the groundbreaking work of two remarkable gay artists, Paul Wonner and Theophilus Brown, who ignited an artistic flowering known as the Bay Area Figurative Movement from their Berkeley studio. Wonner and Brown, whose 56-year relationship was forged dur ing the McCarthy era, did break many rules, but they paid a high price for it. Their tendency to focus on the male figure discour aged critical attention and commercial success. Only now, through this retrospective, is their artistic contribution being duly recognized. Paul Wonner (1920–2008) and William “Theophilus” Brown (1919–2012), despite being recognized as Bay Area artists, hailed from Tucson, Arizona, and Moline, Illinois, re spectively. They met in 1952 while both were pursuing a mas ter’s degree in art at UC-Berkeley, and the rest is history. And yet, they had very different personalities. Wonner, who was shy and soft-spoken, thought the gregarious Brown was a bit of a snob, and he had a point. Brown graduated from Yale and had decades. Living openly as a gay couple during the perilous cli mate of 1950s America posed significant personal and profes sional risks. A 1953 executive order barred homosexuals from employment in the federal government, resulting in numerous dismissals and the outing of thousands without legal recourse. These prosecutions had a chilling impact on the art world, forcing most gay artists to abandon homoerotic imagery and figurative art altogether. Queer artists had to adopt strategies of concealment during this period to survive. This is when Abstract Expressionism was the dominant American school, and it pro vided a convenient outlet. Artists like Ellsworth Kelly and Agnes Martin avoided scrutiny by living discreetly and creating exclusively abstract works. When Bay Area artist Richard Cald well Brewer dared to create explicit homoerotic imagery, he paid the ultimate critical price: complete erasure of his work. Another San Francisco artist, Bernice Bing (1936–1998), had Ignacio Darnaude, an art scholar, lecturer, and film producer, is cur rently developing the docuseries Hiding in Plain Sight: Breaking the Queer Code in Art . mingled with influential cultural figures like Picasso and Stravinsky during the postwar years, when Elaine and Willem de Kooning took him under their wing. It wasn’t love at first sight. It took six weeks for Wonner to invite Brown to his apartment for lunch, a simple gesture that catalyzed a profound personal and artistic partnership that lasted five and a half

three strikes against her as a queer Asian woman; only now is she getting the recognition she deserves. Wonner and Brown shared a studio in Berkeley that became the nerve center for an artistic revolt against the repression of the times. It all started the day the artist Richard Diebenkorn, who also had a studio in their building, showed up freezing at Wonner and Brown’s door, asking if they had a heater. Wonner and Brown’s studio was large, and they invited him in. It was around this time (1955) that Diebenkorn and other artists—such as Elmer Bischoff, David Park, James Weeks, and Nathan Oliveira—began to gather for drawing sessions centered on the human figure at Wonner and Brown’s studio. Brown relished these sessions because he experienced a camaraderie very dif ferent from the vibe in New York, where he felt only rivalry among the up-and-coming artists. This creative association gave birth to what came to be known as the Bay Area Figurative Movement , which challenged the dominance of Abstract Expressionism and offered an alter native path. David Park was the first to break away when he trashed his abstract canvases at San Francisco’s city dump in 1949. His painting Kids on Bikes (1950), depicting two male Brown’s frequent depiction of male nudes, despite galleries’ re luctance to “sell anything with a penis.” Brown persisted be cause “his mission was to bring parity to female and male nudity in galleries and museums.” His male nudes, including his dar ing self-portraits, are the most overt manifestation of his sexu ality, but—perhaps because few of them depicted male-to-male contact—critics sidestepped their homoerotic implications. Joint exhibitions of Wonner and Brown’s work faced rejec tion until 1999, when Wonner was 79 and Brown was eighty. The reluctance stemmed from fears of alienating potential buy ers due to the nature of their relationship. The prudery of the early days compelled them, like numerous contemporary artists, to embed queer themes in their art through creative subterfuges and coded imagery that could be recognized by gay viewers (and a few others) while eluding everyone else. Classical imagery provided an ideal cloak for their homo erotic expressions. Wonner’s depictions of Greek sculptures with harmonious proportions allowed him to show his appreci ation of the male form with impunity. Brown’s surreal and am biguous homoerotic classical imagery, often untitled to figures, set the tone for what was to come: a resurgence of figurative art in place of ab straction. In 1957, The Oakland Museum mounted a groundbreaking show titled Con temporary Bay Area Figurative Painting , which put the movement and these painters on themap. The title of the current exhibition, Break ing the Rules , also refers to Wonner and

Theophilus Brown and Paul Wonner and the Bay Area Figura ti ve Movement challenged the dominance of Abstract Expressionism, o ff ering an alterna ti vepath.

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acceptable to heterosexual viewers. Brown, who was the most symbolist artist of the Move ment, infused his work with ten sion and a sense that there’s more here than meets the eye. The totemic figures in his arca dian compositions are not dis tinct individuals but archetypes imbued with psychological and sexual undertones. The poses in Nude Figures on a Beach with Horse and Dog (1986) create a charged atmosphere in which intimate connections are estab lished among certain figures while male nudes are presented as outsiders, reflecting his per sonal journey as a gay man. Once again, critics avoided dis cussing their homoeroticism, choosing to highlight instead how “the human figure seam lessly integrates into nature.” Wonner and Brown fre

Theophilus Brown. Standing Bathers , 1993.

quented the Yuba River, indulging in naked swims. Wonner’s paintings of nude bathers went unquestioned because they aligned with the established tradition of men bathing together. Drawing inspiration from Paul Cézanne, Wonner portrays the bathers as a dynamic mass of interwoven, predominantly male figures. Wonner sent a touching Christmas card to Brown in which he referred to himself as “Paul Cézanne,” an acknowledg ment of the influence of the French artist on their work. In con trast to Wonner’s approach, Brown’s bathers, such as Standing Bathers (1993), which is the official image of the exhibition, stand as iconic, solitary figures within a surreal frieze reminis cent of classical and neo-classical artists. David Park, another member of the Movement, also explored nude bathing motifs that exuded sensuality but avoided overt eroticism. While they may seem tame to our eyes, Park’s portrayal of male nudes amid the stifling atmosphere of the 1950s was an act of defiance. Early in their careers, Wonner and Brown came to the con clusion that the division between abstraction and figurative art was largely arbitrary. Rather than eliminate one or the other, they broke artistic boundaries by fusing these seemingly disparate styles into a new form of painting which, in Wonner’s words, “offered a psychological experience.” A case in point is River Bathers (1961), in which the semi-abstract features of two sitters engaged in an ambiguous relationship allow Wonner to hint at homosexuality, providing a glimpse into his world while keep ing us at a distance. Their prolific depiction of swimming pools, a motif they explored upon moving to Malibu in 1963, predated David Hockney’s iconic pool paintings. What’s more, their style diverged sharply from that of Hockney with his inviting turquoise waters. Compare that to Brown’s foreboding, shadow laden scenes in works like Swimming Pool (1963). Wonner and Brown employed an array of coded imagery to convey same-sex desire, such as flowers, a historical symbol

encourage varied interpretations, navigated a delicate balance between visibility and defiance. Both artists also created mytho logical images, another popular trope with which to depict al luring males on the pretext that their nudity was taking place in the realm of fantasy. Wonner’s 2007 painting Five Models as Bacchus is another example. Their portrayal of nudes in arcadian settings, a long-stand ing tradition among gay artists and writers, also hinted at same sex desires. Wonner created his own version of Arcadia in a series of modern-day park scenes in which male figures enjoy an environment of absolute peace and freedom, a gay paradise. Meanwhile, Brown’s arcadian images celebrated hetero- and homosexual relationships alike in scenes that he called “Fan tasies of a beautiful, harmonious world.” Brown created dream like or surreal scenes in settings such as beaches, which provided a pretext for nudity. (He got inspiration from photos in nudist magazines, which were cheaper than paying a model and featured people interacting.) Christian images were also a common smokescreen. Won ner created multiple sensual images of angels, Saint Sebastian, St. John of the Cross, and even Christ—in a scene in which he’s tempted by a naked man. He also gave Daniel in the Lion’s Den a homoerotic twist, portraying Daniel as young, beefy, and naked. Most of these mystical scenes have a tinge of surrealism that encodes their obvious homoeroticism. Both artists also mastered the art of hiding gay imagery in plain sight. Early in his career, Brown painted football scenes infused with male intimacy. What’s fascinating is that Brown didn’t know anything about sports. When Life magazine ran an article about these paintings, the writer noted that “Brown was unconcerned with the tactics of a game, even putting a same colored jersey on members of opposite teams.” He was right; all Brown cared about was men in close quarters in a way that was

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used by queer artists to represent unspoken desires. A well known example is the green carnations that were used by gay men during the Oscar Wilde era to identify one another. By the end of the 1950’s, Wonner began painting male nudes holding flowers. In these coded images, he subverted the aggressive masculinity of the Abstract Expressionists (think Jackson Pol lock), offering a portrayal of virility that was gentle, vulnerable, and sensual. Another example, and one of his best-known paint ings, is the large triptych Seven Views of the Model with Flow ers (1962), which can be interpreted as another one of his arcadian landscapes or even as a religious image. All seven men have halos, echoing Jesus and his disciples. Wonner’s œuvre includes frequent coded images of pansies. The word “pansy” is, of course, one of many anti-gay slurs. In his striking French Still Life (1990), a vase with pansies stands proudly above books depicting French and English artists, im plicitly claiming that queer artists are at the top of the artistic canon. His landmark painting Glasses with Pansies (1968) por trays two isolated and distant pansies, mirroring the sense of isolation felt by Wonner and Brown. Despite the tight-knit nature of their Movement, both artists knew that, as a gay couple, they would always remain outsiders to some degree. This fact inevitably impacted their work, in fusing it with imagery of absence and isolation. Wonner and Brown moved to Santa Monica in 1961 when Wonner became an art instructor at UCLA. They took morning swims and, while this should normally be a joyful activity, Brown’s painting Mus catine Diver (1963) depicts a somber landscape and an ominous sky, with a sense of disconnection as one man turns away from the other. Wonner frequently portrayed empty chairs, a recurring

motif symbolizing loss. In 1962, the two artists developed a close friendship with writer Christopher Isherwood and his partner, artist Don Bachardy. Their weekly gatherings for conversation and sketch ing often took place at Isherwood’s home. Works from these sessions are difficult to identify, given Wonner’s tendency to title pieces using only initials, possibly to widen their appeal or to conceal the identities of their social circle. For instance, Won ner cryptically referred to Brown as “W. B.,” and, in the enig matic portrait Living Room at I’s (1964), the “I” refers to Isherwood. The unfocused faces in this painting allow for var ied interpretations—potentially representing Isherwood and Bachardy or perhaps even Wonner and Brown themselves. Upon their brief return to Berkeley in 1974, Brown created provocative artworks portraying explicit homosexual and het erosexual acts, which remained unseen in public until the 1990s. Wonner sought solace in literature to better understand his iden tity as a gay man, finding resonance in Walt Whitman’s writ ings. His tribute series to Whitman includes American Men Thinking of Walt Whitman (1975), which features burly men under a rainbow, three years before the rainbow flag became the symbol of the LGBT community. In 2001, Wonner faced physical challenges when his back gave out, prompting their move to a seniors’ residence in San Francisco. During this period, Wonner delved back into the male form with a series titled “Youth and Old Age.” Through inti mate gouaches, he fearlessly tackled aging and mortality, starkly contrasting portraits of himself, clothed and aged, with nude, youthful male models. Commented Wonner: “I feel that they are both me. The art connects us.” The way the poses of artist and model mirror each other underscores this connection. Ac cording to Brown, Wonner created these self-portraits as a way to be remembered for posterity. The images created by Wonner and Brown are not their only legacy to the LGBT community. They donated over 1,800 works to the Crocker Museum in Sacramento, to be sold with proceeds supporting acquisition and exhibition of art by emerg ing LGBT artists, thus leaving a lasting gift of support for the community’s artistic endeavors. Wonner once remarked: “Being gay was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It gave me a direction that I might not have had otherwise and made me not afraid of being an out sider and being by myself. It also gave me a lot of courage to just blunder ahead and do things.” Theophilus Brown declared: “Because of the constant opposition under which we live, we become very strong. We look deeper into things because we are forced to. In a way it’s a great privilege. I would choose to be gay if there had been a choice at all.” Wonner and Brown were influenced by many artists, but clearly they were each other’s most important inspiration, even while also remaining independent in their work. When Wonner died in 2008, Brown declared: “Paul was the most central per son in my life. He was also my best critic and I think I was his. When I did something that wasn’t very good and I wanted re assurance, I didn’t get it from Paul. He was always honest. I think that’s what I miss the most.” Brown lived four more years, creating art until the very end. I want to believe that, thanks to the excitement around this exhibition, they’ve finally become the heroes of their own stories.

Paul Wonner. Nude and Statue , 1969.

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