Sylvia Rivera, at a sweet moment
 
The Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally started in 1970 with the express purpose of asserting the visibility of gays and lesbians demanding rights and respect. It also commemorated The Stonewall Riots, a series of violent clashes with police attempting to raid The Stonewall Inn, a New York gay club commonly targeted for police harassment and brutality. Here we see Latina trans activist Sylvia Rivera, homeless from the age of ten and brutalized by the police ever since, fighting for the mic in Washington Square Park to demand gay and lesbian activists recognize more than white, middle-class, cisgendered folks in the struggle.

You can hear the boos and heckles as she denounces the burgeoning transphobic, bourgeois queer culture, in spite of the fact that she herself was a Stonewall Rioter at the age of 18. Sylvia would not be intimidated, shouting, “You all tell me go and hide my tail between my legs! I will not any longer put up with this shit!” Rivera continued her radical activism up until her death in 2002, criticizing assimilationist gay initiatives up until the very end.

With today’s Supreme Court to ruling on DOMA, I’d like to keep her in mind. There’s still so much work to be done. Sylvia Rivera didn’t shout through a crowd of her own community for nothing.
 

 
I just had a HOLY SHIT moment! I’ll be damned if I see a better music video than this all year. It has everything: love, loss, anger, regret, redemption, destruction. Pimples being squeezed. 30 second thrash pop. Sets to make John Waters proud.

SF heroes Hunx And His Punx, aka the gorgeous Seth Bogart and his (mostly) all girl backing group, return with a new record in July called Street Punk, and to whet our salivating appetites to the point of drowning, have dropped a new clip featuring not one, not two, but THREE tracks squeezed into one 5 minute video. So, technically, it can’t actually be called a music video, singular, which excludes it from end-of-the-year polls. That makes it even better.

But it doesn’t matter what those poll-building squares decide anyway, man, we finally have the queer-punk Star Wars. Street Punk Trilogy defines a generation; like Lord Of The RIngs before it, it manages to convey that universal mystery of the human condition, while making bold statements about life in the late-capitalist, early 21st Century.

OK, full disclosure: one of the highlights of my performing career so far has been warming up for Hunx & His Punx last year in Manchester (pics cos it happened) so of course I am biased. They are super-nice people, and, most importantly, they are brilliant. So really, it doesn’t matter what I say or how much hyperbole I lay out, this video is still ace, and I dare any of you to watch it and not lol at least once.

Help some Punx get viral people, give this a whirl:

Hunx & His Punx “Street Punk Trilogy”

 
Conner Habib is a gay porn star and educator—as well as being an avid student of the occult and, in particular, the works of esoteric thinker Rudolf Steiner.

He’s written for Salon, Out and many others—and is currently making a name for himself with a pro-sexuality, pro-spirituality message. After studying at the University of Massachusetts with evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis, Conner left a career in academia and education to set sail on the high seas of adult entertainment—and also as an independent writer and lecturer. His candor and openness as a pro-sexuality advocate are matched by his eloquence as a speaker on the subject of experimental spirituality and magick. In short, he’s the Timothy Leary of gay porn—and the embodiment of Middle America’s worst nightmares.

It might be good, then, that Middle America doesn’t know he exists—yet.

Conner stopped by my Ultraculture podcast to have a chat about magick and the Western Esoteric Tradition—the tradition of scientifically-minded inquiry into the spiritual world which runs throughout Western history and has been represented by thinkers like Steiner, Gurdjieff, Aleister Crowley and many, many others.

We had a great conversation not only about spirituality and “higher consciousness” but also about the nature of the self, interconnectedness, meditation, the Gaia Hypothesis and many other avenues of higher consciousness. It was a great chat, enlivened by Conner’s insistence on warmth and compassion.

(Conner is also about to offer an online course through Evolver, “How to Start a (Sexual) Revolution,” featuring guests Samuel Delaney, Duncan Trussell, Buck Angel and Tristan Taormino. Registration is discounted through June 7.)

Check out the podcast at Jason Louv’s Ultraculture!

 
YouTuber Hart delightfully answers a question that her audience has posed to her numerous times:

“If you love women so much, how come you don’t you dress like one?”

Hart’s answer is priceless... as you will see.
 

 
As you may know, voguing is one of my major obsessions. I put together this hefty piece of writing on the modern vogue/ballroom scene for Boing Boing back in March: Welcome to the Ballroom, where Voguing is always in style. 

Inspired by interviews I gathered in my research for that piece, and my general love of watching videos clips of the dancing, sharing audio of the best music, and generally just watching geeky interviews, I have started a new blog dedicated to vogue and ballroom culture in its many forms. It’s called CVNTY and you can find it here: http://c-v-n-t-y.tumblr.com/

While Paris Is Burning is one of my favourite movies ever, for many, it seems to have frozen vogue culture in a late 80s/early 90s time warp, something that is easier to digest as a retro scene. Of course, the era depicted in that film WAS a golden age, but voguing is a hugely vibrant culture right now, and I aim to show both the past AND the present, and maybe even a little bit of the future, if I’m lucky. There are already exclusive interviews up on CVNTY with kingpins of the modern ballroom sound MikeQ and Vjuan Allure, along with many others I interviewed for Boing Boing but whose contributions didn’t get used, as well as cross posts to pieces I have written for other sites such as Red Bull Music Academy and Dalston Superstore. I will keep the remit of this blog to dance music artists whose work touches on issues of queerness/race/class/otherness, although there will always be room for posting music, people and things that just fucking fabulous. Needless to say, my own production and dj work as CVNT will pop up from time to time.

To lure you in, dear DM reader, here’s a rare voguing clip I’ve just posted on CVNTY, and am sharing here too, as it deserves much more than the paltry 24,000 views it currently has.

It’s called Voguing: The Message, and it is from 1989, which means it pre-dates both Paris Is Burning and Madonna’s vogue daliance. It takes a look at the emerging vogue ball scene and the pier children who attended these events, and features interview and performance footage of the legendary Willi Ninja (above.) Founder of the House of Ninja, Willi was unarguably one of the greatest voguers of all time, and hugely responsible for voguing travelling beyond the clubs and being taken seriously as a n art form. This film possibly even pre-dates Ninja’s own starring role in the video for Malcolm McLaren’s “Deep In Vogue”, one of my favourite pieces of dancing ever caught on film. More info:

Voguing: The Message traces the roots of this gay, Black and Latino dance form, which appropriates and plays with poses and images from mainstream fashion. Voguing competitions parody fashion shows and rate the contestants on the basis of movement, appearance and costume. This tape is a pre-Madonna primer that raises questions about race, sex and subcultural style.

Dir. Jack Walworth, David Bronstein & Dorothy Low 1989 13 min. USA

Founded in 1977, Frameline is the nation’s only nonprofit organization solely dedicated to the funding, exhibition, distribution and promotion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender media arts. Frameline Voices is a new digital initiative that showcases diverse LGBT stories and expands access to films by and about people of color, transgender people, youth, and elders.

Voguing: The Message is that rare thing, an important historical document that gives insight into a time, a place, and a set of people. In other words it’s that thing we call GOLD DUST. 

You can find more like this (and subscribe!) over on CVNTY, but for now GET INTO IT:
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Notes from the Niallist: That’s so CVNT, a ‘future-house’ voguing mix
Notes from the Niallist: A celebration of ‘Paris Is Burning’ with Latrice Royale and Peaches Christ
Dream Queens: ‘Voguing and the House Ballroom scene of NYC 1989-1992

 
I’m so in love with this… that I’m so in love with this!!! A terrific Leigh Bowery shower curtain spotted by our pals at World of Wonder. This gem has a “buy it now” option on eBay for $95.00.

WANT.

Below, a crude, but effective (and NSFW) music video of Leigh Bowery and Raw Sewage doing their version of “Walk this Way.”
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The Legend of Leigh Bowery

Leigh Bowery interviewed by Gary Glitter

Leigh Bowery’s Raw Sewage

 
Pier Paolo Pasolini said his first films were inspired by Antonio Gramsci, the founder and one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party.

To Pasolini, Gramsci was the ‘greatest Marxist theoretician in all Italy,’ who wanted popular art to be aimed at an “ideal people.”

But by the 1960s, this “ideal people” had been turned by capitalism into consumers—a culture of mass consumption, where works of art and politics had little or no value.

It was then that Pasolini instinctively rejected the idea of making films for mass consumption, and instead opted for a more personal and political film-making.

Based on Montaigne’s idea that ‘one does not really know a person until he has died,’ Philo Bregstein’s documentary Whoever Says The Truth Shall Die—A Film About Pier Paolo Pasolini offers a fascinating look at the life, artistic ambitions and political vision of the poet, writer and controversial film director.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Pier Paolo Pasolini: A rare interview on the set of ‘Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom’

 
Actual lesbians are invited to watch “lesbian” porn (you know, the kind that men like) and then give their thoughts about what they’re witnessing.

The YouTube comments for this video are as misogynistic as you’d expect. But then again it’s just YouTube commenters, so who cares what they think?

It’s a tad NSFW.

 
Via BuzzFeed

 
Is it an absolute truism that the most strident, vociferous homophobes are always self-hating closeted gays? Judging from the dozens upon dozens of anti-gay Christian activists and conservative pols who have been “outed” over the years, it would seem to be an immutable law of that particular brand of assholism.

And speaking of assholes, Liberal radio host Alan Colmes very nearly got rabidly anti-gay, hate-filled Christian hater Bryan Fischer to admit to something truly hilarious on his show the other day.

Read between the lines of this exchange:

Colmes: Have you ever had a gay impulse?

Fischer: (Laughing) Alan, I am not going to talk about that ...

Colmes: I’m just wondering ...

Fischer: Alan, I’m not going to go there. Give it a rest Alan ...

Colmes: It’s a simple yes or no question.

Fischer: We’re not going to talk about that.

Colmes: Because maybe if you’ve been able to overcome your gay impulses and you’ve been successful in doing it, you could be a model for other people you’d like to see act the same way.

See what he did there? Standing ovation!

Fischer: The focus here, Alan, is that everybody experiences sexual impulses that if they acted on those impulses, it would destroy them.

Colmes: Well, can you give me an example from your own life? What would be some of yours?

Fischer: You’ve experienced them ...

Colmes: I have?

Fischer: I’ve experienced them. Every man, every woman has experienced certain sexual impulses that, if they acted on them, if they conducted themselves by yielding to those impulses, it would destroy them. Ask Tiger Woods about that.

Nice try, Bryan, but he’s asking YOU.

Colmes: I don’t think I’ve ever had sexual impulses that would destroy the society or the culture or make me a deviant in some way. I honestly don’t think that’s ever happened, even in your eyes, so I’m surprised. I wonder what impulses you’re talking about. If you’ve had them, I’d love to know what they are.

Fischer: Well the focus Alan is on sexual conduct, sexual behavior, not on sexual impulse ...

Colmes: So you won’t tell me whether you yourself have been able to overcome a gay impulse?

Fischer: Alan, give it a rest.

Getting a little squirmy there, are we Bry?

What’s Fischer hiding? It is, as Colmes said during the conversation, a simple yes or no question. He knows what the answer is, just like anyone else would and yet curiously, he chose not to say. Somehow I think that if the answer was, ahem, a straightforward “no” he would have just said “no” without hesitation.

But he didn’t. You don’t need to be Alex Jones (or much of an amateur psychoanalyst, either) to draw certain observations from this unintentionally revealing exchange…

Hopefully this question will dog Bryan Fischer around for the rest of his fuckin’ life… or at least until he’s caught with a “traveling companion” he met on Grindr…
 

 
Via Right Wing Watch

 
Great. Exactly what the world needs right now.

The publisher’s descrpiton of the book:

This picture book for young children presents the traditional, Judeo-Christian view of the family in picture-book format. In school, young Michael learns that God made men to be fathers and women to be mothers. After school, his father takes him to the zoo, where he learns that animal families consist of a male, a female, and their offspring.

~snip

Upon observing these phenomena, Michael asks his father two questions:

1. Why does his friend have two fathers?
2. Am I adopted?

His father sensitively addresses both of these questions with love and compassion, and he tells Michael that he needs to pray for his friend and his friend’s two fathers.

By now, you probably already know my thoughts about this. Jesus Christ!
 

 
Via Christian Nightmares