D. Gilson

Queer scholarship?

Sun, 19 May 2013 11:20:32 -0400

Queer scholarship?

I came to South Carolina and all I got was Will Stockton’s...

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:25:44 -0400

I came to South Carolina and all I got was Will Stockton’s moldy muffin?

Trash day on G Street.

Thu, 02 May 2013 11:32:52 -0400

Trash day on G Street.

Manic pixie Charlie Brown! #hipster (at Ann Taylor Loft)

Wed, 01 May 2013 16:05:47 -0400

Manic pixie Charlie Brown! #hipster (at Ann Taylor Loft)

vintagemarlene: cher at age 18 (via...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 08:48:26 -0400

vintagemarlene:

cher at age 18 (via pleasurephoto.wordpress.com)

Love this Cher at 18!

An Open Letter to the Springfield Community

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:31:00 -0400

Dear Springfield,

I am angry. I am angry that John Lindell finds my homosexual lifestyle unworthy of precise legal protection. I am angry that his asinine rhetoric fuels homophobia and the violence this homophobia too-often results in. I am angry that he equates my homosexuality to greed (as well as anger, gambling and chemical dependence). That he does this, quite ironically, from behind the iron gates of his exclusive subdivision along the banks of the Finley River. I am angry that my working-class family pays tithes to provide for Lindell to live in such a place. I am angry that he heads a church that time and time again treats many—women, Catholics, Jews, queers, liberals, and intellectuals, to name but a few—as second class citizens, as people who are lacking the favor of whichever god he clings to.

I am angry that a city I love, a region that made me who I am, is so influenced by one man at one church. I am angry that when Lindell faces critique over his recent political comments, he and his followers will likely react that they are a people under attack, a rebellious, courageous bunch that reminds me of when cultural studies scholar Mark Greif explains what “can happen to middle class whites, particularly, and to all elites, generally, when they focus on the struggles for their own pleasures and luxuries—seeing these as daring and confrontational—rather than asking what makes their sort of people entitled to them, who else suffers for their pleasures, and where their ‘rebellion’ adjoins social struggles that should obligate anybody who hates authority.” I am angry that a church like James River Assembly provides no real room for questioning the excessiveness or ethics of their worship—it is a place that could easily be called the High Church of Capitalism, after all—and yet will demand a place at the table for a discussion on queer issues.

Yes, I am angry about all that. But if I’m being honest, I’m less angry about those things than I am frustrated. Lindell, after all, has every right to espouse hateful rhetoric. And I care little about his opinion on these matters, much like he probably cares little about my—a gay, liberal, agnostic’s—opinion on them. But I am angry that he is given serious audience on important queer issues before an official political body, the city council’s sexual orientation and gender identity task force. And further, I am angry that the City of Springfield feels the need to have a faith subcommittee for such a body, for an issue that is not a faith issue, but a health and protection issue for the LGBT community. Lindell is no more an informed expert on queer issues than I am a theologian; I will stand for him being asked to speak before such an official body no more than he would stand for me speaking before his church.

In love and solidarity,

D. Gilson
PhD Student, American Literature & Culture
The George Washington University

Cut to me (stress) eating (vegan) chili dogs.

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:06:53 -0400

Cut to me (stress) eating (vegan) chili dogs.

Me when a theoretical book does not have a usable index.

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:33:18 -0400

myheartspace11:

No big deal, Tony Kushner and me. (at GWU - Old Main)

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 17:46:14 -0400

No big deal, Tony Kushner and me. (at GWU - Old Main)

Photo

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 07:47:36 -0400

But fo’ realz, Aziz in motion! (at Chinatown Coffee...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 16:53:40 -0400

But fo’ realz, Aziz in motion! (at Chinatown Coffee Company)

Hey #pcaaca2013, our panel, “Boys’ Bodies, Consumer...

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 09:53:41 -0400

Hey #pcaaca2013, our panel, “Boys’ Bodies, Consumer Commodities, and Modern Masculinities,” is in the Thurgood Marshall Ballroom South at 3pm. (at Washington Marriott Wardman Park)

Wisdom, from the USPS. (at Rome Hall)

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:09:39 -0400

Wisdom, from the USPS. (at Rome Hall)

Brothers since age 13, @robbyhipp and I.

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 19:36:58 -0400

Brothers since age 13, @robbyhipp and I.

Dear Queer: Dear Queer Poet, At seventeen, I finally feel mature enough to embark...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:50:16 -0400

Dear Queer: Dear Queer Poet, At seventeen, I finally feel mature enough to embark...:

queerask:

Dear Queer Poet,

At seventeen, I finally feel mature enough to embark on an epic poem about my coming-out story. I have been through many hardships. For instance, my father said that my sexuality “isn’t a big deal.” And my best friend said she “doesn’t care.” What advice do you have for a…

Dear Queer: Dear Queer Poet

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 23:02:45 -0400

Dear Queer: Dear Queer Poet:

queerask:

Dear Queer Poet,

I’ve been looking for you! We met at the I-95 rest stop in Wisconsin a few weeks back. I recognized you from your press photos that show off your wicked tattoo. Any chance we can hook up again? I’ll be driving back through next week.

Xo,
Brad from Boston

Oh hey,…

queerask: too queer to function

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:49:19 -0400

queerask:

too queer to function

Dear Queer Theorist / Dear Queer Poet, Installment One

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 10:33:42 -0400

Dear Queer Theorist,

I was perusing Craigslist Missed Connections after weekly knitting group last night and I ran across one titled “Pro-style cocksucker, I-95 rest stop.” The ad described the cocksucker’s tattoo in detail; it was shaped like Wisconsin and below the left ear lobe. This is my husband. What do I do?

Xo,
Pat in Punxsutawney

Dear Pat,

If you will pardon the slight reproach, I find that your question suffers from no small measure of ambiguity condensed into your final (symptomatically redundant, as you imply concern about what your husband is doing) use of the verb “to do.” “Doing” implies an action that must first be informed by a more complete understanding of the scope of and stakes in your discovery as well as your “perusal.” (You know that “to peruse” means “to examine thoroughly,” and not “to skim,” correct? Not to be prescriptivist, but the word is often misused.). Condensed into but, I think, also provoking your question about “doing” seems to be a degree of anxiety (although with so little to go on I am hesitant to measure how much) regarding what we may term your husband’s sexuality: that modern nexus of personality, history, and habits; of tastes and preferences spoken and unspoken; of distinctive marks and morphology (like the Wisconsin tattoo – Go Packers! – that in this case at least stuck in the mind of the man who was presumably holding your husband’s ears while packing his cock deep inside that pro’s throat). Put another way still, you seem to be asking (again at least in part, and please, too, pardon the slight suspicion that informs my translation of your question here) a question about your husband’s sexual orientation: the direction (phenomenologically) of his sexual, erotic, and/or libidinal drive, or at least the current primary direction, insofar as it can be discerned, because (well, just one because) orientations may shift.

I don’t know the answer to this question, but I also don’t care. More interesting is the relationship between sociality and sexuality that your question and the ad together suggest; the relationship, that is, between the kinds of sexuality that find expression and concealment (sexuality about which I note you say nothing) in your own knitting group, as compared to the rest stop (about which much has already been said) in which your husband works a second job. (Get it? I punned on “job.”) Perhaps you could write more about your knitting group. After all, structuring both forms of sociality (group knitting, rest stop dick-sucking), but certainly in very different ways, are various vectors of power and communication, some horizontal, some vertical, as well as a series of rules, tacit and explicit and somewhere in between, that regulate the behavior of people inside each social space. You might think too about the way electronic media, specifically email and the Internet, mediate relationships within and between each social group. It was a rhizomatic vector of electronic transmission indeed that had you stumble across this ad regarding a “missed connection” with your husband!

I can’t help but note, further, that the phrase “missed connection” needs unpacking given that the social space in which it originated typically facilitates anonymous sexual encounters. What kind of work is the category “missed connection” doing in terms of the norms of anonymity that govern rest stop encounters? What constitutes an encounter in the first place? Also, in what sense was the connection missed? Presumably, your husband sucked the cock of the person who placed the ad. What was missing, then, from this encounter that left the person who placed the ad in a state of longing, in a state of constant desire – desire being by definition constant, but felt with sufficient intensity, at least for a moment, to result in its Craigslist expression?

xoxo,
QT

This might really be a sign of the snow apocalypse: I’m...

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 09:22:43 -0500

This might really be a sign of the snow apocalypse: I’m drinking tea, not coffee, and reading British, not American. (at Teaism)

“These are the years and the walls and the door / that...

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 10:50:58 -0500

“These are the years and the walls and the door / that shut on a boy that pats the floor / to feel if the world is there and flat.”

Happy birthday, Elizabeth Bishop!