On Fred Phelps and Projective Identification

I'm not entirely sure the first time I heard of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church. For a group of about 40 people, it has had an oversized impact on the media and our perceptions of anti-gay hostilities in the United States.

The damage that those 40 people have done is immense. Their pickets has caused immeasurable pain to countless families. The Phelps clan's vitriolic creed of alienation, destruction, and hate will impact our world for years to come.

Phelps died yesterday. Many have celebrated that his presence has been removed from this world. I'm not entirely unsympathetic for those expressing a great deal of hatred toward him as a result of the pain he has brought into this world.

I also worry a great deal.

• I worry about how difficult it is to rise above our wrathful and vengeful desires. 
• I worry what it says about us when we direct the same evil Phelps directed toward us toward him. 
• I worry that we are no better than Phelps: we wish harm and destruction upon those we do not like. 
• I worry about the ways in which we have become the projective identification of Fred Phelps.
• I worry about the ways in which Fred Phelps has become a projective identification of us.

I also remember the funeral of Matthew Shepard. I remember the power of that small group of people who found another way. A group of concerned caring people gathered around the protestors from Westboro Church dressed in angel costumes. The angels turned their back to the protestors and with wings soaring up toward the sky, stood with silent power repelling the hatful projections of Westboro Church. They shielded those who came to mourn.

It's time those angels turn around and face Fred Phelps. We need to look silently toward him and see ourselves. We need to see our anger. We need to see our hatred. We need to see our own destructive potential.

We need to look at Phelps and find another way.

We need to change.

The Queer Nation Manifesto

This morning I read an article in the New York Times an article that made mention of Queer Nation protesting in New York. Good to see them back. Modern social movements have seemed to lose the power needed to disrupt the status quo and bring about meaningful social change.

The website History as a Weapon has printed the text of a manifesto originally passed out by people marching with the ACT UP contingent in the 1990 New York Gay Pride Day parade. I'm reprinting the manifesto here. 

It reminds me of a time when social change was about liberation and freedom -- not conformity and becoming part of the status quo.

Queer Nation Manifesto

How can I tell you. How can I convince you, brother; sister that your life is in danger. That everyday you wake up alive, relatively happy, and a functioning human being, you are committing a rebellious act. You as an alive and functioning queer are a revolutionary. There is nothing on this planet that validates, protects or encourages your existence. It is a miracle you are standing here reading these words. You should by all rights be dead.

Don't be fooled, straight people own the world and the only reason you have been spared is you're smart, lucky, or a fighter. Straight people have a privilege that allows them to do whatever they please and f--- without fear. But not only do they live a life free of fear; they flaunt their freedom in my face. Their images are on my TV, in the magazine I bought, in the restaurant I want to eat in, and on the street where I live. I want there to be a moratorium on straight marriage, on babies, on public displays of affection among the opposite sex and media images that promote heterosexuality. Until I can enjoy the same freedom of movement and sexuality, as straights, their privilege must stop and it must be given over to me and my queer sisters and brothers.

Vintage Gay America: Crawford Barton

I almost passed by this image. It appears on first look to be a rather uninteresting scene of late 1970s New York or San Francisco. After looking a little closer and dwelling on the afternoon light illuminating the men, I decided to dig a little deeper. The glowing afternoon light gives these men the appearance of coming out into the light.

“I tried to serve as a chronicler, as a watcher of beautiful people - to feed back an image of a positive, likable lifestyle― to offer pleasure as well as pride.”

American photographer Crawford Barton (June 2, 1943 - June 10, 1993) chronicled the rise of gay culture in San Francisco from the late 1960s through the devastation brought on by HIV and AIDS in the 1980s. 

Barton's partner of 22 years, Larry Lara died of AIDS related illnesses shortly before Crawford Barton joined the overwhelming chorus of creative men dead from AIDS on June 10, 1993. It is estimated that more than 650,000 have died in the United States from this plague.

There are used copies of a book of Barton's work available on Amazon. The GLBT Historical Society in California holds all of Barton's papers and studio work. Here are a few of his images. Let them invite you into a world when the gay community was just waking up and discovering their own liberation.

These men are not gay | This is not a farmer | Disfarmer

Perhaps an example of the original hipsters? I almost queued this up on Tumblr with a witty descriptor without a second thought. I probed a little deeper into the history of this image and am glad I did. It turns out to be a jewel of a photo that takes us on an exploration of the deep south.

The sixth of seven children born to a large German immigrant family in rural Arkansas, Mike Meyers (1884-1959) separated from his background and renamed himself Disfarmer. It is said that "he even claimed at one point in his life that a tornado had lifted him up from places unknown and deposited him into the Meyers family."

I may consider changing my name to Dispsychologist. If I do Maggie will be known as Disdog. This however is a topic for another dispost.

A self taught photographer, Disfarmer set up shop on the back porch of his house in Heber Springs Arkansas. Several years later the house was destroyed in a storm and Disfarmer set up shop in downtown Heber Springs where he worked for the rest of his life.

An opera was written about an imagined vignette of Disfarmer's life.

"Disfarmer's reclusive personality and his believe in his own unique superiority as a photographer and as a human being made him somewhat of an oddity to others. Having your picture taken at Disfarmer's studio became one of the main attractions of a trip into town." (read more here)

Desire and Difference: Hidden in Plain Sight

Emerging from the distant darkness, a glowing young man walks toward the foreground wearing a white shirt and tan pants. He is carrying some sort of stick or staff aloft in the air. Waiting in the foreground is a shirtless young man with his arms outstretched in a peculiar angle.

What is happening here? The image evokes such a strong sense of sweet hungry anticipation.

It turns out the story of this particular image was not hard to uncover. It comes from a film made in 1949 by Gregory J. Markopoulos, a 21 year old gay man. A little bit about the filmmaker before we get to Christmas USA...

Rarely seen and nearly forgotten, Markopoulos' films were once compared to the works of Joyce, Proust, and Einstein. --Kristin M. Jones, ArtForum

Markopolous was born in Toledo Ohio and raised by immigrant Greek parents. He started making movies when he was 12 years old with a borrowed 8mm silent movie camera. His work has been described as "dreamlike, dialogue-free mini dramas, filled with images of myth and symbol, and highlighted by conspicuously attractive young men" and "...shows excessive scenes of homosexuality and nudity [including] closeups, in color and often protracted, of such things as a male nipple, a painted and coiffured male head, a buttock, and two-shots of a facially inert girl and boy." 

How shocking, indeed. [n.b. sarcasm] 

The 1950s and 1960s (and 70s, 80s, 90s, and...) were a horrifically oppressive time for anyone who experienced same sex love and attraction. To that point, observe the quote in To Free the Cinema written by Andrew Sarris:

Markopolous ... is a really nasty, unpleasant person, who really plays hardball, really gets angry, vicious about things, because of this homosexual thing. 

Markopolous responded to his critics by calling them "soulless morons" and asked that his films be removed from American distribution. Markopolous was a gay filmmaker attempting to depict gay people and their lives on screen at a time when being deep within the closet was de rigueur. It couldn't have been very easy for him.

The average man is destroying beauty. The average man no longer looks into another man's eyes. Everyone is afraid . . . sometimes I think the only way to save the United States is by going somewhere else--just as the ancient Greek philosophers fled to Asia Minor and Italy. --Gregory Markopolous

Once hailed as "the American avant-garde-cinema's supreme erotic poet," Markopolous (March 12, 1928-November 20, 1992) nearly vanished from the American consciousness by his own volition. After prohibiting all his films from distribution in 1967, Markopoulos and his lover, filmmaker Robert Beavers, left the U.S for Greece. The couple also refused interviews and demanded a chapter on  Markopolous be removed from P. Adams Sitney's book Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde.

It wasn't until after Markopolous died in 1992 that Beavers allowed his partner's work to be shown in the United States.

Christmas U.S.A is not a primarily erotic film. It contains no nudity (unless shirtless men is considered nudity), no lingering looks at nipples (okay, maybe a couple nip slips here and there), and no depictions of sex (okay, maybe a little suggestive hunger). Instead it offers a look at the painful repression people with same sex desire experienced in the late 1940s and early 50s. There is an equal amount of shimmering excitement of desire. 

As the movie starts, we watch as our main character moves through a dream sequence of a carnival, alone and hidden in plain sight among the rides, freak shows, and passing crowds. In another scene, we see our main character, a clean cut young man, shaving in the bathroom mirror. In another series of dream like images, we see a reflection of himself emerge from the forest like a woodland fairy dressed in a flowing kimono. Two worlds collide when our clean cut boy communicates with his inner woodland fairy on the phone. Desire and difference  hidden in plain sight.

We move on and meet our character's family. A rather worn out looking mother, busy performing the domestic rituals expected of a woman in this era. A prim looking sister, reading a comic book suggesting the traditional roles expected of women. A father in his chair, barely able to contain his fear (or contempt) for his youthful shirtless son.

Our protagonist strips, sits in the tub, and closes his eyes. There is a hint of sensuality and sexuality in the air. The door knob rattles and we are reminded of the fear of being discovered, being exposed, being found out to be homosexual. 

Our young protagonist embarks on a journey carrying a candle aloft in the air across town, over train tracks, and under a bridge. He finally encounters a shirtless young man standing motionless with his hands outstretched. The young boy bows before the statue and we are left with the sense that some sort of connection happened. 

Hidden and exposed. Safe and vulnerable. Take the time to watch this 13 minute film with all its subtle details and moments. As far as I know, this is the first positive depiction of gay people in the movies.

The original film was silent. Music, composed by Larry Marotta, was added by someone at a later date. 

Christmas, U.S.A. (1949) from Sbignew Rustaveli on Vimeo.
directed by Gregory Markopoulos

Read more about Gregory Markopoulos here, here, here, here, here, and here.

For more images of vintage men and their relationships (some gay, some straight) visit: Vintage Men: Innocence Lost | The Photography of William Gedney; It's Only a Paper Moon;Vintage Gay America: Crawford Barton; These Men Are Not Gay | This Is Not A Farmer | Disfarmer; Desire and Difference: Hidden in Plain Sight, Come Make Eyes With Me Under the Anheuser Bush, Hugh Mangum: Itinerant Photographer, Two men, Two Poses; Photos are Not Always What They Seem, Vintage Sailors: An Awkward Realization, Three Men on a Horse, Welkom Bar: Vintage Same Sex Marriage, Pretty in Pink: Two Vintage Chinese Men, Memorial Day Surprise: Vintage Sailor Love, Memorial Day: Vintage Dancing Sailors, The Curious Case of Two Men Embracing, They'll Never Know How Close We Were, Vintage Love: Roger Miller Pegram,Manly Affections: Robert Gant, Homo Bride and Groom Restored to Dignity, The Men in the Trees, The Girl in the Outhouse, Tommy and Buzz: All My Love,Men in Photo Booths, and Invisible: Philadelphia Gay Wedding c. 1957. You can also follow me on Tumblr.

Gay Stereotypes: Illustrated

These are fun. Brooklyn-based illustrator Paul Tuller and creative director James Kuczynski have teamed up and are selling these stereotypes reclaiming posters via Society6. A portion of the selling price for each poster goes to the GLSEN campaign "Think B4 You Speak," which raises awareness of the use of homophobic words and phrases.

Three Men on a Horse

What are these three men doing hanging out on a fake horse?

Visiting San Francisco, obviously.

Why these three men got up on this horse is lost to history. The where is a little bit easier to find.

The Cliff House (look up  in the right corner) was a popular tourist destination. The original burnt in 1907.

For the curious reader, you can read all you ever wanted to know about Sutro's Cliff House here, here, here, here, here, and here.

For curious reader's who would rather watch a video you might be interested in this one by Thomas Edison that depicts the Sutro Baths.

As for the three men. They were probably friends--or brothers--stopping off in town. Perhaps they were heading off to war? Their image, as many other's that depict vintage men in relationships, often are seen to represent gay relationships. They aren't. These images are largely a reminder of earlier times when men had more freedom to express intimacy as part of a friendship.

For more images of vintage men and their relationships (some gay, some straight) visit: Two Men and Their Dog; Adam and Steve in the Garden of Eden: On Intimacy Between Men; A Man and His Dog; The Beasts of West Point; Vintage Men: Innocence Lost | The Photography of William Gedney; It's Only a Paper Moon;Vintage Gay America: Crawford Barton; These Men Are Not Gay | This Is Not A Farmer | Disfarmer; Desire and Difference: Hidden in Plain Sight, Come Make Eyes With Me Under the Anheuser Bush, Hugh Mangum: Itinerant Photographer, Two men, Two Poses; Photos are Not Always What They Seem,Vintage Sailors: An Awkward Realization, Three Men on a Horse, Welkom Bar: Vintage Same Sex Marriage, Pretty in Pink: Two Vintage Chinese Men, Memorial Day Surprise: Vintage Sailor Love, Memorial Day: Vintage Dancing Sailors, The Curious Case of Two Men Embracing, They'll Never Know How Close We Were, Vintage Love: Roger Miller Pegram,Manly Affections: Robert Gant, Homo Bride and Groom Restored to Dignity, The Men in the Trees, The Girl in the Outhouse, Tommy and Buzz: All My Love,Men in Photo Booths, and Invisible: Philadelphia Gay Wedding c. 1957. You can also follow me on Tumblr.

Welkom Bar: Vintage Same Sex Marriage

Visit the Welkom Bar/For the Young and Old

This spring I came across some vintage images of a same sex marriage in Jet Magazine. I wrote about the marriage of Harry Rietra and Jean Knockaert in a previous blog post.

Kathy van der Pas, the current owner of the building that Harry and Jean once owned, was kind enough to write me. She shared her knowledge about this history of her art gallery. She wrote:

Pretty in Pink: Two Vintage Chinese Men

Two Chinese Men in Matching Traditional Dress, c, 1870s 

While this image of two Asian men does not portray the men as having a particularly intimate relationship, it does show men who usually don't find their way onto websites chronicling intimacy between men. The vast majority of vintage images that bloggers post depicting intimate relationships between men are of white men. It's rare to find images of men from other races.  

This image is also also an excellent example of how our unconscious associations with certain symbols shape the meaning of what we see. This picture on the left of two Asian men with pink robes--they must be gay, right? 


The pink robes worn by the two men in this picture read to many bloggers as something that constitutes gayness. It's not necessarily a signifier of sexual orientation or attraction. Beyond the pinkness, I can't fathom why people listing this image on blogs and Tumbler would see this picture as one that depicts a vintage gay relationship.

The thousands of observations we make about people in our silent and mostly unconscious process of categorizing and stereotyping people into easily understood categories aren't any more accurate that are assumptions about the color pink in this photograph. Our categories and stereotypes are useful heuristics--but they need to be constantly evaluated and checked with actual data.

In all probability, these men are not gay. It's unclear whether or not they even have any sort of relationship (intimate or not). 

Perhaps a reader with knowledge about 19th century Chinese history might come upon this blog and share some thoughts (anyone read Mandarin? The text in the background might say something interesting). 

The men in the image, the story about why they were captured on film, and who the photographer was are currently unknown. It's fairly easy, however, to find out a lot about some basic identifying information about the image. 

This albumen silver print from a glass negative, produced sometime in the 1870s, is owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The image, not currently on display in the museum, is one of 8,500 photographs from the Gilman Paper Company Collection. If you want to do some very deep research on the people who collected this photographs, check out these two articles about the rise and fall of the Gilman family fortune: here and here. 

Beware of what you think you see when you look at photographs. We easily see what we want to see in vintage photographs. It's much more difficult to stand back and let the image tell us the story it has to tell.

This goes for viewing people in your day-to-day life, too. It's always more challenging--and rewarding--to stand back and let a person tell their own story rather than to hear the story we think they should tell.

For more images of vintage men and their relationships (some gay, some straight) visit: Two Men and Their Dog; Adam and Steve in the Garden of Eden: On Intimacy Between Men; A Man and His Dog; The Beasts of West Point; Vintage Men: Innocence Lost | The Photography of William Gedney; It's Only a Paper Moon;Vintage Gay America: Crawford Barton; These Men Are Not Gay | This Is Not A Farmer | Disfarmer; Desire and Difference: Hidden in Plain Sight, Come Make Eyes With Me Under the Anheuser Bush, Hugh Mangum: Itinerant Photographer, Two men, Two Poses; Photos are Not Always What They Seem,Vintage Sailors: An Awkward Realization, Three Men on a Horse, Welkom Bar: Vintage Same Sex Marriage, Pretty in Pink: Two Vintage Chinese Men, Memorial Day Surprise: Vintage Sailor Love, Memorial Day: Vintage Dancing Sailors, The Curious Case of Two Men Embracing, They'll Never Know How Close We Were, Vintage Love: Roger Miller Pegram,Manly Affections: Robert Gant, Homo Bride and Groom Restored to Dignity, The Men in the Trees, The Girl in the Outhouse, Tommy and Buzz: All My Love,Men in Photo Booths, and Invisible: Philadelphia Gay Wedding c. 1957. You can also follow me on Tumblr.

Memorial Day Surprise: Vintage Sailor Love

Courtesy of Indiana University

While selecting some images of vintage military men for my previous Memorial Day post, my eyes lingered for a few moments on this picture of two sailors kissing. I wondered if it was an actual vintage photo or if, perhaps, it was a more contemporary photo made to look vintage. I surprised when looked into this image. I found a whole lot more than I expected!

This picture looked vaguely familiar to me. In 1988 an artist collective, Gran Fury, in association with ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) started producing social protest art about the AIDS pandemic. I was peripherally involved in the Cleveland ACT-UP chapter and later participated in some protests with the group in NYC.

No wonder this image looked familiar. It was one of the most iconic works of art that Gran Fury made--I probably saw it a hundred or more times when I was in my early 20s. 

If you want to do some deep research, check out this New York Times article When Political Art Mattered, visit the New York Public Library and explore their Grand Fury collection, and read this review of a Gran Fury art exhibition at NYU.

This isn't the end of our journey in this history of this image of two sailors kissing. The original image was displayed at an exhibition at the Kinsey Institute Art Gallery on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington. As part of an exhibit called Love and War, the original image leaves no mystery about the feelings these two sailors had for each other. Read a review of the exhibition here. 

The original image is handsome and sexy, erotic and tender. It's also NSFW, so you'll have to journey to my Tumblr page to see the original version.

I still don't know when, where, or why the image was produced. I've emailed the curator at the Kinsey Gallery to see if she has any additional information. If I learn more, I'll update this post.


For more images of vintage men and their relationships (some gay, some straight) visit: Two Men and Their Dog; Adam and Steve in the Garden of Eden: On Intimacy Between Men; A Man and His Dog; The Beasts of West Point; Vintage Men: Innocence Lost | The Photography of William Gedney; It's Only a Paper Moon;Vintage Gay America: Crawford Barton; These Men Are Not Gay | This Is Not A Farmer | Disfarmer; Desire and Difference: Hidden in Plain Sight, Come Make Eyes With Me Under the Anheuser Bush, Hugh Mangum: Itinerant Photographer, Two men, Two Poses; Photos are Not Always What They Seem,Vintage Sailors: An Awkward Realization, Three Men on a Horse, Welkom Bar: Vintage Same Sex Marriage, Pretty in Pink: Two Vintage Chinese Men, Memorial Day Surprise: Vintage Sailor Love, Memorial Day: Vintage Dancing Sailors, The Curious Case of Two Men Embracing, They'll Never Know How Close We Were, Vintage Love: Roger Miller Pegram,Manly Affections: Robert Gant, Homo Bride and Groom Restored to Dignity, The Men in the Trees, The Girl in the Outhouse, Tommy and Buzz: All My Love,Men in Photo Booths, and Invisible: Philadelphia Gay Wedding c. 1957. You can also follow me on Tumblr.
update

Hi Jason,

Thanks for contacting me about the photograph of the kissing sailors from World War II.  We have several photographs from that shoot, which was done in San Diego by an unknown photographer.  I learned more about the images when someone from ACT UP contacted me a couple of years ago.  He said that one of the men in the photo saw the Gran Fury poster and contacted the ACT UP office to let them know that he and his boyfriend were the men in the image.  They were sailors in WWII who were approached by a photographer and invited to pose for him.  They then shipped out and never saw the photographer again.  This man had no idea that the photographs had been distributed until he saw the ACT UP campaign using the cropped version of one of the photos.  The full story is given in the catalog for the show "Gran Fury: Read My Lips" that was held in NY last year: 

With best wishes,

Catherine

Catherine Johnson-Roehr

Curator, The Kinsey Institute

Indiana University

Memorial Day: Vintage Dancing Sailors

Sailors dancing with each other aboard USS OLYMPIA

So who can resist a picture of sailors dancing?

As with many of the images depicting intimacy and friendship between men, the image on the left originally came to me with no information. I don't like photos without captions--especially images of dancing sailors.

A simple Google image search brought me to the Library of Congress. This image was captured aboard the USS Olympia in 1899 by the photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston.

The Olympia was launched on November 5, 1892 and weighed in at 5,676 tons. The vessel's claim to fame was that it served as the flagship of Commodore George Dewey at the Battle of Manila Bay during the 1898 Spanish-American war. The ship returned to port in Boston on October 10, 1899. It was reported that the officers and crew of the USS Olympia were feted and the ship was repainted complete with a gilded bow. The ship was decommissioned in November and placed in reserve.

Perhaps these images of the dancing sailors were taken as part of that party? Johnston's photos came the year the vessel was decommissioned. It wasn't specified if the picture was taken as part of the decommissioning ceremony or not.

Sailors aboard the OLYMPIA waltzing at tiffin time

The Curious Case of Two Men Embracing

This image caught my eye when I came across it yesterday. It has a intense degree of intimacy between these two young men that is absent in most of the vintage pictures I've been collecting of friendship between men.

Fingers intricately intertwined. Chin rested on a shoulder. Torsos and hips held close. A knee, caught in a sunbeam from long ago, bent and pressed against another man's leg.

These two guys are close.

They are very close.

Truth be told, the real reason this picture grabbed my attention is two of my friends (@LadyParabellum and @KateFowler03) are currently vacationing in Idaho. I'm guessing this is not a modern day scene they'll be seeing.

So who are these men? What story might they have to tell us?

First we'll have to look at the full picture. The image I originally came across is a crop. Some anonymous person on the internet decided to remove a significant portion of this story before posting it.  This isn't an uncommon thing in images that I found: many bloggers will crop pictures so they tell a more preferable story or focus in on a particular aspect of the picture. This particular image was also photoshopped and, as you'll see, transformed from a black and white negative to a sepia toned print.

You can even spend a significant amount of money to get a print of the image at various retailers. The image is available for free at the Library of Congress.