Sorry for the lack of updates. I have been busy studying for my exams, which in 10 days time.
Last weekend was eventful, when Nyk was down for the weekend. It was partially spoilt by my manager, which I shall not go into details.
On Sunday, we went to a Catholic church. First time for me, as I have never been to church on normal Sundays, only special events like Christmas. Can't say I was taken in by the whole thing, but I just observed and observed some more. A lot of questions popped up while whole ritualistic and symbolic goings on took place.
After that, we went to Chinatown and passed by a shoe shop. Nyk bought a pair of black leather shoes for work.
Then we headed to the movies for an anime called Paprika. It was a marvellous show with very vibrant colours and art and memorable music. The storyline was gripping yet slightly complicated, nevertheless it was thoroughly enjoyable.
Highly recommended. IMDB attests to it, with an average of 7.9 out of 10 stars.
After the movie, we headed to Orchard as SK needed to buy some Aussiebum underwear for her friend in Europe. Apparently, it is much cheaper in Singapore.
So New Urban Male was where we ended up. We spent quite some time there choosing. I even bought something for myself, a pair of CIN-2 underwear.
We grabbed some snacks as we were quite hungry, even though it was nearly dinner time.
We stopped at Metro to just look around, but ended up buying two pairs of Private Structure underwear, one for myself and another for Nyk. Luckily, the sales were still on and there was a 20% discount, so it only cost $14 each.
Dinner was at Dempsey Road. The place is inaccessible by buses or trains, so we had to take a cab. As we turn into the road, I realised what an expensive evening it was going to be. The place was dotted with Korean, Western, Italian etc restaurants, which were formerly army barracks.
We met Nyk's brother at Fabrikka, an Italian outfit. The food was great. Nyk has the photos, so I didn't take any. I can't remember the names of the stuff we had, but they were beef, swordfish and duck. I will let him post comments on the food on his blog.
Overall, I had a really good time with him. It was wonderful to see him again after so long. And we would meet again quite soon, which is next month.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
A meme which turned into a post
Got tagged by Queerrant. Think there was another meme earlier, but that seems so long ago.
According to this meme, I am supposed to post eight facts or habits about myself.
I read this book back when I was university, called Personality Plus by Florence Littauer.
Basically, it's about the four major types of personalities. I am recalling them from memory, which shows how much time I have spent on this. When I was in university, I had to deal with all sorts of people in the society that I joined. Hence, understanding the different types of personality is useful.
Each of usually have a lot in common with two out of the four, with a little of the other two. Something like 40%, 40%, 10% and 10%.
The four major types are:
1) Popular Sanguine
These are the people who are full of energy, enthusiastic, the live wire of the party. They can make any stories come alive and tell the same jokes over and over and still make everybody laugh. Well like by everybody. They are spontaneous and crazy.
The not so good characters are that they are usually forgetful and disorganised.
2) Perfect Melancholic
These are the perfectionist. They are analytical, smart and as the name suggest, melancholic. They think they are unique and that no one understands them. Introverted and thus spend a lot of time reading and being introspective. Moody. Thus they are smart and deep people. Usually emphatic as well.
The down side is that they usually depressive. If you can draw a graph, with the y-axis as emotion and values above zero as happy, there would be a lot of deep valleys and few small hills. Taken to the extreme, could be suicidal.
A lot of geniuses are in this category, like Mozart and Beethoven.
3) Powerful Choleric
These are the leaders. Decisive and assertive. Know what he or she wants. Able to make the people around him rally towards a common goal. Inspirational and has charisma. Speaks well in public.
People who are extreme in this category may come across as bossy or unfeeling. They are very results-oriented and thus may neglect the fact that people are humans with feelings too.
4) Peaceful Phlegmatic
These are the people who avoids conflicts and usually are the mediators to arguments. They are easy going people and get along well with everyone. They genuinely care about the people around them and wants everyone to be happy. A good provider and giver and takes care of people well.
If you could draw a graph of their emotions, it would be almost flat. They experience neither extreme happiness or sadness. They avoid conflicts and thus may seem agreeable and pushovers. Hence, they usually go along with whatever decision others make.
They don't like to make decisions as they want others to do so and be happy. They lack initiative.
Err ... think I have digressed too much.
Still, for the first fact about me, wanna hazard a guess which two personalities am I?
According to this meme, I am supposed to post eight facts or habits about myself.
I read this book back when I was university, called Personality Plus by Florence Littauer.
Basically, it's about the four major types of personalities. I am recalling them from memory, which shows how much time I have spent on this. When I was in university, I had to deal with all sorts of people in the society that I joined. Hence, understanding the different types of personality is useful.
Each of usually have a lot in common with two out of the four, with a little of the other two. Something like 40%, 40%, 10% and 10%.
The four major types are:
1) Popular Sanguine
These are the people who are full of energy, enthusiastic, the live wire of the party. They can make any stories come alive and tell the same jokes over and over and still make everybody laugh. Well like by everybody. They are spontaneous and crazy.
The not so good characters are that they are usually forgetful and disorganised.
2) Perfect Melancholic
These are the perfectionist. They are analytical, smart and as the name suggest, melancholic. They think they are unique and that no one understands them. Introverted and thus spend a lot of time reading and being introspective. Moody. Thus they are smart and deep people. Usually emphatic as well.
The down side is that they usually depressive. If you can draw a graph, with the y-axis as emotion and values above zero as happy, there would be a lot of deep valleys and few small hills. Taken to the extreme, could be suicidal.
A lot of geniuses are in this category, like Mozart and Beethoven.
3) Powerful Choleric
These are the leaders. Decisive and assertive. Know what he or she wants. Able to make the people around him rally towards a common goal. Inspirational and has charisma. Speaks well in public.
People who are extreme in this category may come across as bossy or unfeeling. They are very results-oriented and thus may neglect the fact that people are humans with feelings too.
4) Peaceful Phlegmatic
These are the people who avoids conflicts and usually are the mediators to arguments. They are easy going people and get along well with everyone. They genuinely care about the people around them and wants everyone to be happy. A good provider and giver and takes care of people well.
If you could draw a graph of their emotions, it would be almost flat. They experience neither extreme happiness or sadness. They avoid conflicts and thus may seem agreeable and pushovers. Hence, they usually go along with whatever decision others make.
They don't like to make decisions as they want others to do so and be happy. They lack initiative.
Err ... think I have digressed too much.
Still, for the first fact about me, wanna hazard a guess which two personalities am I?
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Thirteen: Game of Death
Last Friday, we watched this Thai movie called 13, Game of Death. Its synopsis:
13 is a new and very secret competition offering a grand prize of 100 million Baht. The contestants are chosen from those most afflicted with problems involving work, money, family and love. If they can complete 13 tasks, they'll receive riches beyond their wildest dreams. But there's a catch...the challenges will test them in every aspect of their lives from love to religion and even moral values. They may seem undemanding when they start but as they progress they become increasingly more intense until finally, they reach a stage where they are no longer sure if they are human anymore. As with every game there are rules and these rules must be obeyed at all times. If they fail even one of the tasks, they will be dismissed from the game. The rules prohibit them from giving up from telling anyone else that they are playing and from investigating the origin of the game. A man named Phuchit is delighted to be offered the chance to compete, little realizing that it will cost him his friends, his family, his sanity and perhaps his life...What wouldn't you do for money?
It sounds interesting, doesn’t it?
The first task was easy. Swat a fly with a newspaper. Task two: eat that fly. Easy enough to get the participant hooked.
But behind this simple game with, there are thousands of people who pay money to watch this kind of reality show. Phuncit, the participant chosen, is being watched all the time. What he did or didn’t do to finish a task immediately prompts a phone call from the organizer.
As the game progresses, the things he had to do become worse and immoral. He had to make 3 children cry, steal from a beggar and eat shit in a posh restaurant. Yes, you read correctly, he really had to eat shit, served with some brown sauce (chocolate maybe?). That scene was really disgusting.
Another scene which was memorable was how he was tricked into tying a wire across a street, where a group of illegal racers were heading that way. All of them were killed, with brains splattered on the road.
He finally managed to perform the first 12 tasks and reaches the final. Here, there is a twist that elevated the movie to beyond just gore and disbelief. In the end, he made the right choice and regained his humanity, but greed and evil still won.
Overall, I would rate this film a three out of five, for its interesting plot which was adapted from a comic book, even though the direction and pace were not that good.
I am really looking forward to Nyk visiting me in soon. I haven’t seen him for more than two months and how I can’t wait to spend quality time with him *snickers*
13 is a new and very secret competition offering a grand prize of 100 million Baht. The contestants are chosen from those most afflicted with problems involving work, money, family and love. If they can complete 13 tasks, they'll receive riches beyond their wildest dreams. But there's a catch...the challenges will test them in every aspect of their lives from love to religion and even moral values. They may seem undemanding when they start but as they progress they become increasingly more intense until finally, they reach a stage where they are no longer sure if they are human anymore. As with every game there are rules and these rules must be obeyed at all times. If they fail even one of the tasks, they will be dismissed from the game. The rules prohibit them from giving up from telling anyone else that they are playing and from investigating the origin of the game. A man named Phuchit is delighted to be offered the chance to compete, little realizing that it will cost him his friends, his family, his sanity and perhaps his life...What wouldn't you do for money?
It sounds interesting, doesn’t it?
The first task was easy. Swat a fly with a newspaper. Task two: eat that fly. Easy enough to get the participant hooked.
But behind this simple game with, there are thousands of people who pay money to watch this kind of reality show. Phuncit, the participant chosen, is being watched all the time. What he did or didn’t do to finish a task immediately prompts a phone call from the organizer.
As the game progresses, the things he had to do become worse and immoral. He had to make 3 children cry, steal from a beggar and eat shit in a posh restaurant. Yes, you read correctly, he really had to eat shit, served with some brown sauce (chocolate maybe?). That scene was really disgusting.
Another scene which was memorable was how he was tricked into tying a wire across a street, where a group of illegal racers were heading that way. All of them were killed, with brains splattered on the road.
He finally managed to perform the first 12 tasks and reaches the final. Here, there is a twist that elevated the movie to beyond just gore and disbelief. In the end, he made the right choice and regained his humanity, but greed and evil still won.
Overall, I would rate this film a three out of five, for its interesting plot which was adapted from a comic book, even though the direction and pace were not that good.
I am really looking forward to Nyk visiting me in soon. I haven’t seen him for more than two months and how I can’t wait to spend quality time with him *snickers*
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
All in the family
Taken from Oprah Winfrey's website, here and here. I think they were showing some interesting stuff about a few families, called All in the Family.
The eight Huckaby children—Jude, Joan, Jann, Jason, Janie, Jonathan, Jody and John Jr.—grew up in a small southern town. Raised in a close-knit, conservative Catholic home, the Huckabys' life centered on their family and their faith.
"All you had to do was walk in the house to know it. You saw statues of Jesus and Mary and Joseph and a whole bunch of saints," Jody says. "My parents showed all of us what it means to be family every day."
Every day the Huckaby children's father took them to school—and when they came home, their mom had cookies, cupcakes or other treats waiting. "We always felt as though [when] we went to bed at night, we had a good time," Jann says. "We had really lived a good day."
With all 10 family members living in a three bedroom, one bathroom house, space was a little tight. "It's kind of hard not to know what's going on with each other," Jonathan says.
Despite their close upbringing, four of the Huckabys were hiding one important thing—they were gay. "I was first [to come out]," Jason says. "It was about 1985 and I was studying to be a Catholic priest. I'd been in seminary for a number of years, and I came to the point in my life where I realized that I didn't want to live my life alone, that I need today to have a partner in my life." So he wrote a letter to his parents, telling them he was gay.
After receiving the news, the Huckabys' parents told the other seven children about Jason's letter, and Jonathan says they were "not pleased." "Even though it was very scary, I trusted that there was enough of a solid foundation there that it would eventually be a safe thing for me to do, to come out to my family," Jason says.
Jonathan and Jody say as they grew up, they, too, realized they were gay. "If only we had been able to talk about it. There were no parameters. We went to Catholic school, and you certainly didn't talk about that with the nuns," Jody says. Their parents' reaction to Jason's letter made Jody concerned to come out, but eventually, he and Jonathan each admitted their secret. Jody says a fourth brother is also gay.
At first, even their other siblings rejected their lifestyle. Their sister, Jann, says it took her more than a year to fully accept it. "I had prayed about it, and I realized that I did not need to judge. I needed to love," Jann says. When their brother Jude first heard the news, he thought Jason had chosen to be gay. "After the other brothers came out, I said, 'This can't be a choice. This has to be…the way they were born,'" he says.
Jody, who is now the executive director of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), says his organization helped his mother find peace with having four gay children. "For me, it's sort of a full-circle experience, because all these years later, I'm running this national organization, and it's for parents, it's for family members and friends and straight allies to deal with these issues," he says.
I don't know which is more remarkable, the fact that four of eight of them are gay or that the whole conservative Catholic family is alright with it.
Blood is thicker than water.
The eight Huckaby children—Jude, Joan, Jann, Jason, Janie, Jonathan, Jody and John Jr.—grew up in a small southern town. Raised in a close-knit, conservative Catholic home, the Huckabys' life centered on their family and their faith.
"All you had to do was walk in the house to know it. You saw statues of Jesus and Mary and Joseph and a whole bunch of saints," Jody says. "My parents showed all of us what it means to be family every day."
Every day the Huckaby children's father took them to school—and when they came home, their mom had cookies, cupcakes or other treats waiting. "We always felt as though [when] we went to bed at night, we had a good time," Jann says. "We had really lived a good day."
With all 10 family members living in a three bedroom, one bathroom house, space was a little tight. "It's kind of hard not to know what's going on with each other," Jonathan says.
Despite their close upbringing, four of the Huckabys were hiding one important thing—they were gay. "I was first [to come out]," Jason says. "It was about 1985 and I was studying to be a Catholic priest. I'd been in seminary for a number of years, and I came to the point in my life where I realized that I didn't want to live my life alone, that I need today to have a partner in my life." So he wrote a letter to his parents, telling them he was gay.After receiving the news, the Huckabys' parents told the other seven children about Jason's letter, and Jonathan says they were "not pleased." "Even though it was very scary, I trusted that there was enough of a solid foundation there that it would eventually be a safe thing for me to do, to come out to my family," Jason says.
Jonathan and Jody say as they grew up, they, too, realized they were gay. "If only we had been able to talk about it. There were no parameters. We went to Catholic school, and you certainly didn't talk about that with the nuns," Jody says. Their parents' reaction to Jason's letter made Jody concerned to come out, but eventually, he and Jonathan each admitted their secret. Jody says a fourth brother is also gay.
At first, even their other siblings rejected their lifestyle. Their sister, Jann, says it took her more than a year to fully accept it. "I had prayed about it, and I realized that I did not need to judge. I needed to love," Jann says. When their brother Jude first heard the news, he thought Jason had chosen to be gay. "After the other brothers came out, I said, 'This can't be a choice. This has to be…the way they were born,'" he says.
Jody, who is now the executive director of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), says his organization helped his mother find peace with having four gay children. "For me, it's sort of a full-circle experience, because all these years later, I'm running this national organization, and it's for parents, it's for family members and friends and straight allies to deal with these issues," he says.
I don't know which is more remarkable, the fact that four of eight of them are gay or that the whole conservative Catholic family is alright with it.
Blood is thicker than water.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
A day at the swimming pool
I went for a swim in the evening. The weather is freaking hot these days and even the pool's water wasn't cool enough to make me forget about the heat for a while.
Heck, I was actually feeling quite warm in the pool.
As I was on leave today, I went to the pool about 6p.m. Nyk send me a message on Gtalk which said, "Enjoy dear, wish u lotsa eye candy".
Which was quite unlikely, as it was still early and most people would most probably still be in the office.
The pool was more crowded than usual. I blamed it on the weather.
As luck would have it, I was right. There wasn't any cuties. There were passable ones, but not many. Even though my visual disability doesn't help to discern the male faces and bodies, but I am pretty sure there wasn't any.
Anyway, I did notice this guy with yellow and blue trunks swimming while doing my laps. He got out of the pool an hour later. I still wanted to do another half lap, so I did that and I was out of the water about 5 minutes later.
In the bathroom, I saw the guy again. Let's call him Blue Trunks Guy (BTG). BTG was done cleaning up and was drying himself. He was totally naked and of course I looked.
The penis was small. That is only natural after coming out from the pool. His penis wasn't hard, but somehow it pointed about 45 degree from the floor or at about 8 o'clock.
I think he saw me looking. But he didn't seem to mind. He has a nice body, defined.
I went into the shower stall and cleaned myself up. Came out about 5 minutes later. BTG was fully dressed by now and was checking himself in the full length mirror.
I dried myself with a towel and put on my clothes. I noticed that BTG has left the bathroom by now.
However I did take my time, as someone quite hunky came in and I wanted to see him undress. But alas, it was quite disappointing.
As I was putting the last of my stuff in my backpack, I saw BTG in front of the mirror again. There really wasn't much more to adjust or beautify himself, I thought.
We left the changing room, almost together. He was about 20 paces in front of me.
After I exited the building, I noticed that BTG wasn't really sure of where he was headed. He was walking to another direction. I was slightly behind him and I turned a corner.
He followed me.
I was thinking to myself, is he really following me?
I walked slower than my usual pace, as my intention was to let him overtake him.
But he didn't. He was about 5 steps behind me and we walked in that way for 50 meters.
When the pathway widen, I walked towards the side a bit so that he was by my side. I smiled at him, he smiled back and asked in Mandarin "Are you going for dinner?"
I said yes.
"Let's go together then."
What a smooth and appropriate pick up line. Heh.
I now had a better look at him. He has a pleasant look. In fact, he actually resembles someone I know. His body is quite built, but not bulky. Nice muscle bulges in the right places, like those who work out in gyms.
Then the usual beginning of conversations began - where do I stay, occupation, etc.
I did tell him I wasn't proficient in Mandarin, but I did understand mostly what he was saying.
He didn't understand English much, so I had to use my smattering of Mandarin to converse.
Apparently, he is from East Malaysia, has been in Singapore for about 10 years and is currently unemployed.
I had no idea how he knew I was gay. I don't think I act that gay.
I believed this was how he got the confirmation that I am:
BTG: How do you like Singapore?
Me: It's so boring here. Nothing much to do besides shopping.
BTG: Boring? How can it be? Have you visited the gay clubs?
Me: Erm, yeah.
He also asked whether I have a boyfriend. I replied he's in KL. I asked the same question back and he said that he just broke up three days ago.
Hmmm ....
Anyway, right after we finished our meals, he said he had to go. The part that really got me, which showed that he really is a nice guy was when he said this:
"Xie xie ni pei wo chi fan (Thank you for your accompanying me for dinner)"
And he left. He went to a stall selling durians and bought some.
I went to the next stall selling other types of fruits. He came over and said, "The durians are sold cheaply." And he went off.
That was really kind of him to tell me.
And then it dawned on me that he might actually have been interested in me. If I was single, something might have happened. The 3 day breakup thing might just be a sob story and not be true.
I didn't realise it earlier but now everything seem to make sense. He was obviously staying longer than necessary in the bathroom, so that he could catch me leaving. The way he was changed his direction and followed me .....
So yeah, this really made my day. An ego-booster. I was smiling to myself whenever I think about it.
I think I have just been cruised for the very first time ;P
Heck, I was actually feeling quite warm in the pool.
As I was on leave today, I went to the pool about 6p.m. Nyk send me a message on Gtalk which said, "Enjoy dear, wish u lotsa eye candy".
Which was quite unlikely, as it was still early and most people would most probably still be in the office.
The pool was more crowded than usual. I blamed it on the weather.
As luck would have it, I was right. There wasn't any cuties. There were passable ones, but not many. Even though my visual disability doesn't help to discern the male faces and bodies, but I am pretty sure there wasn't any.
Anyway, I did notice this guy with yellow and blue trunks swimming while doing my laps. He got out of the pool an hour later. I still wanted to do another half lap, so I did that and I was out of the water about 5 minutes later.
In the bathroom, I saw the guy again. Let's call him Blue Trunks Guy (BTG). BTG was done cleaning up and was drying himself. He was totally naked and of course I looked.
The penis was small. That is only natural after coming out from the pool. His penis wasn't hard, but somehow it pointed about 45 degree from the floor or at about 8 o'clock.
I think he saw me looking. But he didn't seem to mind. He has a nice body, defined.
I went into the shower stall and cleaned myself up. Came out about 5 minutes later. BTG was fully dressed by now and was checking himself in the full length mirror.
I dried myself with a towel and put on my clothes. I noticed that BTG has left the bathroom by now.
However I did take my time, as someone quite hunky came in and I wanted to see him undress. But alas, it was quite disappointing.
As I was putting the last of my stuff in my backpack, I saw BTG in front of the mirror again. There really wasn't much more to adjust or beautify himself, I thought.
We left the changing room, almost together. He was about 20 paces in front of me.
After I exited the building, I noticed that BTG wasn't really sure of where he was headed. He was walking to another direction. I was slightly behind him and I turned a corner.
He followed me.
I was thinking to myself, is he really following me?
I walked slower than my usual pace, as my intention was to let him overtake him.
But he didn't. He was about 5 steps behind me and we walked in that way for 50 meters.
When the pathway widen, I walked towards the side a bit so that he was by my side. I smiled at him, he smiled back and asked in Mandarin "Are you going for dinner?"
I said yes.
"Let's go together then."
What a smooth and appropriate pick up line. Heh.
I now had a better look at him. He has a pleasant look. In fact, he actually resembles someone I know. His body is quite built, but not bulky. Nice muscle bulges in the right places, like those who work out in gyms.
Then the usual beginning of conversations began - where do I stay, occupation, etc.
I did tell him I wasn't proficient in Mandarin, but I did understand mostly what he was saying.
He didn't understand English much, so I had to use my smattering of Mandarin to converse.
Apparently, he is from East Malaysia, has been in Singapore for about 10 years and is currently unemployed.
I had no idea how he knew I was gay. I don't think I act that gay.
I believed this was how he got the confirmation that I am:
BTG: How do you like Singapore?
Me: It's so boring here. Nothing much to do besides shopping.
BTG: Boring? How can it be? Have you visited the gay clubs?
Me: Erm, yeah.
He also asked whether I have a boyfriend. I replied he's in KL. I asked the same question back and he said that he just broke up three days ago.
Hmmm ....
Anyway, right after we finished our meals, he said he had to go. The part that really got me, which showed that he really is a nice guy was when he said this:
"Xie xie ni pei wo chi fan (Thank you for your accompanying me for dinner)"
And he left. He went to a stall selling durians and bought some.
I went to the next stall selling other types of fruits. He came over and said, "The durians are sold cheaply." And he went off.
That was really kind of him to tell me.
And then it dawned on me that he might actually have been interested in me. If I was single, something might have happened. The 3 day breakup thing might just be a sob story and not be true.
I didn't realise it earlier but now everything seem to make sense. He was obviously staying longer than necessary in the bathroom, so that he could catch me leaving. The way he was changed his direction and followed me .....
So yeah, this really made my day. An ego-booster. I was smiling to myself whenever I think about it.
I think I have just been cruised for the very first time ;P
Monday, July 02, 2007
Toki wo kakeru shôjo
I watched an extremely good anime last Tuesday, called the Girl Who Leapt Through Time. It was the number one anime in Japan last year.
I think the title made it obvious what the movie is all about, which was about a girl Makoto who one day discovered she had the ability to leap through time but only to the past. Thus, she was presented with the opportunity to change things which she wasn’t happy about, like retaking an exam which she failed, eating a pudding which was eaten by her sister previously and avoiding the issue when a guy showed romantic interest in her.
The only person who knew about her ability was her aunt, whom she consulted with on what to do and her dilemma of liking her two close friends. Deep down, she preferred Kosuke but she went to match-make him and another girl who has a crush on him.
She has two close friends, whom she plays baseball with everyday, Kousuke and Chiaki.
Someone called Dick Steel has written a review on IMDB which is similar to what I thought:
The movie has light hearted moments, sometimes bordering on the slapstick, no thanks to the bumbling Makoto character. In a sequence, it was reminiscent of Chinese Odyssey starring Stephen Chow, where each time travel moment gets played ad nausem with different comedic effect. Undoing blunders as we see is not exactly Makoto's forte, and while she may be using her powers in a carefree way, with great powers come great responsibilities (sorry, can't resist that one!)
Another review, from THEM Anime:
After one day discovering that she has the special ability to “leap” back in time, a high-school girl named Makoto Konno decides to use her newfound powers for trivial purposes such as getting to school early, eating pudding and singing in a karaoke rental for prolonged hours.
Review
In what arguably sounds like the most humdrum plot ever conceived, it’s almost surprising that Mamoru Hosoda’s first directorial venture with Madhouse turned out to be the real winner that it is; in what seems to be the first of two successful anime film-adaptations of original stories written by Yasutaka Tsutsui this year (2007 in the US), The Girl Who Leapt Through Time demonstrates that creativity can make even the most primordial of storytelling devices (in this case, the quagmire of contradiction and convenience that is time-travel) relevant, intelligible and a whole lot of fun.
What sets this sexy piece of Madhouse meat apart from other shows that may have dabbled in the playground of time and space manipulation is probably director Hosoda’s focus and creativity to make the re-interpretation of even the most menial of everyday tasks unequivocally entertaining. Makoto’s fondness towards her newly-discovered time-leaping abilities is liken to that of an innocent youth who was probably lucky enough to get her hands on a Nintendo Wii, at launch date, minus the endurance of having to line up at Target 5AM in the morning in the blistering cold; Hosoda manages to convey this sublime child-like innocence of delight through many of the movie’s characters in a manner that almost defies any amount of praise that I can humanly give it; there was just something so incredibly genius and pure about Makoto using her powers to go back in time just for the sake of contemplating the glorious satisfaction of getting to a pack of pudding before her little sister was able to partake in the joy of consuming it. Even Makoto’s self-righteous attitude when she’s finally able to experience the pleasure of walking to school early instead of using her bike to come in late (much to the amazing surprise of everyone in the neighborhood) came off as more real than it did pompous.
Indeed, changing the past may have cause undesirable consequences. Saving someone from disaster would cause someone else to be hurt or injured. There is no such thing as escaping from something bad totally, as that something bad will happen to someone else.
Which did happen. Makoto avoided an incident of splashing hot oil and small fire in her domestic skills cooking class but another person took her place. Three students blamed that poor guy for the incident and a cycle of pranks which grew to vengeful proportions escalated between them, which led to someone getting seriously hurt in the end.
Although Makoto liked Chiaki, she was somehow afraid when Chiaki professed his feelings for her till she had to go back in time a couple of times and changed the topic of conversation when the subject came up. She wanted to maintain her carefree days, playing baseball everyday, not willing to face the fact that her friends will grow up and move on to other things.
In a way, I like that. Youthful idealism which has to make way for the realization that things can never be the same in life, especially the things that we enjoy.
The movie also has the message of moving forward, to not dwell on the past but look forward to the future, which has better and brighter things.
It reminds me of myself. A lot of things are and can never be the same anymore, so it is always best to enjoy them while it lasts.
Towards the end, it was found out that Chiaki was from the future and he was in the present to look at a painting. That painting doesn’t exist anymore in the future.
The ending was slightly confusing (time travel stories usually are and they have loopholes) but Chiaki finally went back to the future. He promised to wait for Makoto and see her in the future. The farewell was quite sad, Makoto almost cried her eyes out.
That romantic bit was quite cute. Wished Nyk was there with me, so that I could hold his hand.
Another thing which I liked was the time travelling sequence. The scene is different and unique, quite unlike the usual myriad of fast moving colours.
The Best Animated Film of the recent Awards of the Japanese Academy and I think it fully deserved the award. This sweet and humorous tale is highly recommended.
Oh yeah, and the soundtrack. I really love the songs in the movie. Very soothing and romantic, the music complemented the movie well.
And I think that Chiaki is cute!
Oooh, oooh, guess what? Some kind soul has uploaded the whole movie on youtube, split into 12 parts. I will definitely watch it again. Heck, I want the DVD!
Overall, I would rate an 8 out of 10. IMDB’s rating is 8.4 out of 10.
Here is the first part. Enjoy.
I think the title made it obvious what the movie is all about, which was about a girl Makoto who one day discovered she had the ability to leap through time but only to the past. Thus, she was presented with the opportunity to change things which she wasn’t happy about, like retaking an exam which she failed, eating a pudding which was eaten by her sister previously and avoiding the issue when a guy showed romantic interest in her.
The only person who knew about her ability was her aunt, whom she consulted with on what to do and her dilemma of liking her two close friends. Deep down, she preferred Kosuke but she went to match-make him and another girl who has a crush on him.
She has two close friends, whom she plays baseball with everyday, Kousuke and Chiaki.
Someone called Dick Steel has written a review on IMDB which is similar to what I thought:
The movie has light hearted moments, sometimes bordering on the slapstick, no thanks to the bumbling Makoto character. In a sequence, it was reminiscent of Chinese Odyssey starring Stephen Chow, where each time travel moment gets played ad nausem with different comedic effect. Undoing blunders as we see is not exactly Makoto's forte, and while she may be using her powers in a carefree way, with great powers come great responsibilities (sorry, can't resist that one!)
Another review, from THEM Anime:
After one day discovering that she has the special ability to “leap” back in time, a high-school girl named Makoto Konno decides to use her newfound powers for trivial purposes such as getting to school early, eating pudding and singing in a karaoke rental for prolonged hours.
Review
In what arguably sounds like the most humdrum plot ever conceived, it’s almost surprising that Mamoru Hosoda’s first directorial venture with Madhouse turned out to be the real winner that it is; in what seems to be the first of two successful anime film-adaptations of original stories written by Yasutaka Tsutsui this year (2007 in the US), The Girl Who Leapt Through Time demonstrates that creativity can make even the most primordial of storytelling devices (in this case, the quagmire of contradiction and convenience that is time-travel) relevant, intelligible and a whole lot of fun.
What sets this sexy piece of Madhouse meat apart from other shows that may have dabbled in the playground of time and space manipulation is probably director Hosoda’s focus and creativity to make the re-interpretation of even the most menial of everyday tasks unequivocally entertaining. Makoto’s fondness towards her newly-discovered time-leaping abilities is liken to that of an innocent youth who was probably lucky enough to get her hands on a Nintendo Wii, at launch date, minus the endurance of having to line up at Target 5AM in the morning in the blistering cold; Hosoda manages to convey this sublime child-like innocence of delight through many of the movie’s characters in a manner that almost defies any amount of praise that I can humanly give it; there was just something so incredibly genius and pure about Makoto using her powers to go back in time just for the sake of contemplating the glorious satisfaction of getting to a pack of pudding before her little sister was able to partake in the joy of consuming it. Even Makoto’s self-righteous attitude when she’s finally able to experience the pleasure of walking to school early instead of using her bike to come in late (much to the amazing surprise of everyone in the neighborhood) came off as more real than it did pompous.
Indeed, changing the past may have cause undesirable consequences. Saving someone from disaster would cause someone else to be hurt or injured. There is no such thing as escaping from something bad totally, as that something bad will happen to someone else.
Which did happen. Makoto avoided an incident of splashing hot oil and small fire in her domestic skills cooking class but another person took her place. Three students blamed that poor guy for the incident and a cycle of pranks which grew to vengeful proportions escalated between them, which led to someone getting seriously hurt in the end.
Although Makoto liked Chiaki, she was somehow afraid when Chiaki professed his feelings for her till she had to go back in time a couple of times and changed the topic of conversation when the subject came up. She wanted to maintain her carefree days, playing baseball everyday, not willing to face the fact that her friends will grow up and move on to other things.
In a way, I like that. Youthful idealism which has to make way for the realization that things can never be the same in life, especially the things that we enjoy.
The movie also has the message of moving forward, to not dwell on the past but look forward to the future, which has better and brighter things.
It reminds me of myself. A lot of things are and can never be the same anymore, so it is always best to enjoy them while it lasts.
Towards the end, it was found out that Chiaki was from the future and he was in the present to look at a painting. That painting doesn’t exist anymore in the future.
The ending was slightly confusing (time travel stories usually are and they have loopholes) but Chiaki finally went back to the future. He promised to wait for Makoto and see her in the future. The farewell was quite sad, Makoto almost cried her eyes out.
That romantic bit was quite cute. Wished Nyk was there with me, so that I could hold his hand.
Another thing which I liked was the time travelling sequence. The scene is different and unique, quite unlike the usual myriad of fast moving colours.
The Best Animated Film of the recent Awards of the Japanese Academy and I think it fully deserved the award. This sweet and humorous tale is highly recommended.
Oh yeah, and the soundtrack. I really love the songs in the movie. Very soothing and romantic, the music complemented the movie well.
And I think that Chiaki is cute!
Oooh, oooh, guess what? Some kind soul has uploaded the whole movie on youtube, split into 12 parts. I will definitely watch it again. Heck, I want the DVD!
Overall, I would rate an 8 out of 10. IMDB’s rating is 8.4 out of 10.
Here is the first part. Enjoy.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Real men don't speed
Thanks to Howsy for this information.
You think it will work in Australia? I mean, straight man and their ideas on manhood and manliness, it just might. Most of them can't bear the idea of being thought of as less than a man, or worse, sissy or womanly.
Straight brain: If I am not a man means I am a woman which means I might be gay and arrrgh! I don't want to penetrated!
Wonder if it would work in Malaysia? I mean,Male Chauvinist Pigs MPs make degrading jokes about women "bocor" (leaking) monthly, surely they are man enough to accept an advertisement about them not a man by speeding?
Article taken from BBC.
Australian drivers hit below belt
A new Australian ad campaign is seeking to reduce road deaths by questioning the manhood of speeding drivers.
The series of TV ads shows women shaking their little finger - a gesture used to symbolise a small penis - as speeding male motorists race past.
The $A1.9m (£805,400, US$1.6m) campaign aims to make speeding socially unacceptable among young drivers.
The "Speeding. No-one Thinks Big of You" campaign will run on TV, in cinemas, at bus shelters and online.
The shock tactics of previous adverts that showed disturbing images of death and injury in road crashes have not worked, says the New South Wales state government authority behind the ads, the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA).
Exposure to "computer games, modern media ... and horror films" had desensitised many young males to the violent images of those campaigns, RTA spokesman John Whelan told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.
The new ads include one young driver revving his engine and rushing through traffic lights in front of two young women and another racing past a female pedestrian.
After both incidents the women wave their little fingers in slow motion with knowing glances.
"We will do what we feel we have to, to get the message through," Mr Whelan said.
Speeding is a factor in about 40% of road deaths in NSW each year, according to RTA figures.
The ad campaign coincides with the introduction of new restrictions on learner drivers, including a ban on all mobile phone use, limits on the number of young passengers allowed and tougher speeding penalties.
This is the TV advert.
You think it will work in Australia? I mean, straight man and their ideas on manhood and manliness, it just might. Most of them can't bear the idea of being thought of as less than a man, or worse, sissy or womanly.
Straight brain: If I am not a man means I am a woman which means I might be gay and arrrgh! I don't want to penetrated!
Wonder if it would work in Malaysia? I mean,
Article taken from BBC.
Australian drivers hit below belt
A new Australian ad campaign is seeking to reduce road deaths by questioning the manhood of speeding drivers.
The series of TV ads shows women shaking their little finger - a gesture used to symbolise a small penis - as speeding male motorists race past.
The $A1.9m (£805,400, US$1.6m) campaign aims to make speeding socially unacceptable among young drivers.
The "Speeding. No-one Thinks Big of You" campaign will run on TV, in cinemas, at bus shelters and online.
The shock tactics of previous adverts that showed disturbing images of death and injury in road crashes have not worked, says the New South Wales state government authority behind the ads, the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA).
Exposure to "computer games, modern media ... and horror films" had desensitised many young males to the violent images of those campaigns, RTA spokesman John Whelan told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.
The new ads include one young driver revving his engine and rushing through traffic lights in front of two young women and another racing past a female pedestrian.
After both incidents the women wave their little fingers in slow motion with knowing glances.
"We will do what we feel we have to, to get the message through," Mr Whelan said.
Speeding is a factor in about 40% of road deaths in NSW each year, according to RTA figures.
The ad campaign coincides with the introduction of new restrictions on learner drivers, including a ban on all mobile phone use, limits on the number of young passengers allowed and tougher speeding penalties.
This is the TV advert.
Monday, June 25, 2007
The Science of Gaydar Pt 2
Continues from Part One.
EXAMPLE D: Hand Dexterity (Male)
Gay men and lesbians have a 50 percent greater chance of being left-handed or ambidextrous than their straight counterparts.
(Derek: I am purely right-handed, but the bf is ambidextrous.)
Ironically, AIDS had also given LeVay opportunity. Before the epidemic, cadavers available for dissecting came with scant personal background besides age and cause of death. But because AIDS was still largely a gay disease, it was possible for the first time to do detailed neuroanatomical studies on the bodies of known gay men. (Being lucky enough to have no proprietary cause of death, lesbians were excluded from the study.)
LeVay decided to make the first detailed comparison of the brain’s hypothalamus, a small region at the base of the brain responsible for regulating everything from blood pressure and body temperature to hunger and wake-sleep cycles. And because it’s awash in more hormones than any other part of the brain, it also helps control emotions and sex drive and enjoys a reputation among neurologists, as LeVay noted in his book The Sexual Brain, for being “haunted by animal spirits and the ghosts of primal urges.”
LeVay suspected the secret to sexual orientation might lurk there as well. It was already known that in (presumably straight) men, a cell cluster in the hypothalamus called INAH3 is more than twice the size of the cluster in (presumably straight) women, a distinction probably created during fetal development when male hormones begin acting on boy fetuses and the two genders embark on different biological courses. LeVay designed a study to see if there were any size differences inside gay brains. His results were startling and unexpected. In gay men, INAH3 is similar in size to straight women’s.
This finding challenged a lot of what scientists believed. “The brain was considered pretty hardwired,” says Roger Gorski, a neurobiologist at UCLA who researches sexual differentiation. “It was male or female, period. Then Simon’s study shows that there could be intermediates. That wasn’t just a watershed—it pushed the water over the waterfall.”
At the time, LeVay presented his findings with caution, acknowledging that HIV or AIDS medications might have been responsible for altering brain structure. But more recently, an important study of sheep brains has replicated his findings. Sheep are among 500 animal species where homosexuality has been documented. They are also among the few who practice exclusive homosexuality, like many humans. In any population of sheep, about 8 percent of males show exclusive homosexual behavior. Little is known about the romantic life of Sapphic sheep because ewes tend to express their sexual interests by standing entirely still, yielding no clues about their partner preferences.
Slicing open the brains of ten ewes, eight female-oriented rams, and nine males who preferred other rams, researchers in the Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine found nearly the same variations in hypothalamus that LeVay first noticed. Male sheep who were attracted to females had a significantly larger hypothalamus dimension than females or male-oriented males.
A second study in humans also found size differences, though less dramatic, in the hypothalamus cluster identified by LeVay. “There’s now more reason to think my results are right, that the gay brain has this distinction,” he says.
If LeVay’s research suggested that biology—not environment, vice, or sinfulness—was likely responsible for male homosexuality, the geneticist Dean Hamer, an author and molecular biologist at the National Institutes of Health, hoped to pinpoint the exact biological mechanism responsible. He scanned gene groups in pairs of gay siblings looking for sites where the relatives had inherited the same DNA more frequently than would be expected on the basis of chance. In 1993, he located a region in the human genome, called Xq28, that appeared to be associated with gayness, a finding that has generated some controversy among researchers who have not fully confirmed the results.
A large-scale study within the next year is expected to determine more conclusively if a gene (or genes) is linked to sexual orientation. Alan R. Sanders, a psychiatrist from Northwestern University, is enrolling 1,000 pairs of gay brothers in one of the largest sexual-orientation studies ever undertaken. With the experiment, funded by an NIH grant of over $1 million, Sanders will attempt to map genes that influence sexual orientation.
Why has it taken fourteen years to carry out such an investigation? Hamer says there is very little research money, and almost no glory, to be gained in the hunt for gayness. “At about the same time as Xq28 came out, we found another gene involved in anxiety—the target gene for Prozac, and since that time, there have been now almost 800 peer-reviewed publications on that gene. Whereas for the gay gene, every experiment has been done by three or four students, most of them my students.”
One of the riddles still vexing geneticists is why only 50 percent of gay identical twins share a sexual orientation with their sibling, despite being genetically identical. “We know from all sorts of research that it’s not your upbringing, not relationship with parents or siblings, not early-childhood sexual experiences and whether you go to a Catholic school or not,” says Sven Bocklandt, a geneticist at UCLA.
“What I believe is that it is the ‘epigenetics environment,’ meaning the environment on top of our DNA—meaning the way that the gene is regulated. If you have identical twins, the genes are identical, but they are used differently. Every man and every woman has all the genes to make a vagina and womb and penis and testicles. In the same way, arguably, every man and woman has the genetic code for the brain networks that make you attracted to men and to women. You activate one or the other—and if you activate the wrong one, you’re gay.”
I can’t ignore Bocklandt’s use of the word wrong in relation to gay genetic codes. I don’t believe Bocklandt has any agenda in his work beyond scientific exploration, nor do I have any reason to believe he is anti-gay. Rather, Bocklandt is driven, as he likes to say, by a voracious curiosity about all sorts of sexual orientations. “This is not about a gay gene,” he says. “This is about sexual attraction, and about love. And about why crocodiles mate and why pigeons mate. It’s amazing to me that we don’t understand how that works. It’s so fundamental. Life on Earth would be very different if heterosexuality didn’t exist. That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
But every discovery in this field ignites a new discussion of morality. Politically, there is something very powerful about the notion that sexual orientation is a matter of biology, not choice. In poll after poll, of the one third of Americans who believe homosexuality is socially influenced, in other words “a choice,” about 70 percent think being gay is “not acceptable.” But for those who believe it is biologically mandated, the statistic reverses, and four out of five Americans find gayness “acceptable.”
As Bocklandt’s slip of the tongue illustrates, subtle judgments abound in the field. It is true that homosexuality does not make a whole lot of sense biologically. It lacks an obvious purpose. That’s the reason evolution-theory scholars call it “maladaptive” and radio shock jock Laura Schlessinger labeled it a “biological error.”
But Stanford biology professor Joan Roughgarden points out in her book Evolution’s Rainbow that most homosexual activity in the animal kingdom serves a fundamentally social purpose. Japanese macaques, for instance, live in female-only societies, arranged in rigid hierarchies. Power and cohesion are established through lesbian couplings, which can last up to four days and seem to prevent violence and aggression. Among many species, in fact, gayness seems to facilitate complex societies. One species of bird has males, females, and “marriage brokers” of a third gender, there to keep the species perpetuating. As adolescents, male bottlenose dolphins perform a kind of oral sex on one another—or in threesomes or foursomes—in rituals that create lifelong friendships and defense partnerships against sharks and other predators.
But for most in the animal kingdom, same-sex pairing is either fleeting or situational. Even Silo and Roy, for six years the poster-penguins for same-sex love in the Central Park Zoo—they famously raised a daughter together—were not destined to last forever. Silo waddled off with a female named Scrappy in 2005, says zoo director Dan Wharton, adding that we shouldn’t worry about Roy’s hurt feelings. “Penguins are matter-of-fact about these things.”
That still leaves a million questions about those gay rams and humans like me, who fall on the far edge of Alfred Kinsey’s sexual-orientation scale, exclusively gay. In a universe in which we look for purpose in order to appoint value, what is the purpose of my gayness?
Dean Hamer sees one possible answer in the fraternal-birth-order studies. “In Polynesian cultures, where you’re talking about very big families, it was typical to have the last-born son be mahu, or gay,” he says. Explorers described young boys who looked after the family and sometimes dressed as girls. “They suspected that their families had made them that way. But you just can’t take a guy and make him clean up and have him become gay. He’s got to have some gayness inside. Maybe that’s the biological purpose to the mahu: taking care of Mom.”
He says this half in jest, I think, but some other evidence bolsters his argument, including the appearance of transgender younger sons among Native Americans (the so-called two-spirits) and in premodern corners of India, Samoa, and Indonesia. A survey published this year suggested that transgender fa’afafines in Samoa are more “avuncular” than heterosexuals—that is, more likely to care for kin. Another study says that female relatives of gay men may have more children; perhaps the very thing that makes their brothers and sons gay makes them more fertile, an ideal situation with extra babysitters on hand. You can slice this stuff any way you want.
(Derek: Here comes the lesbian part. If you're not interested, you can skip the next 4 paragraphs, but they are darn interesting stuff too. Like I have always believed, women doesn't have a fixed orientation like guys, not so hard-wired in the brain.)
Fewer studies have focused specifically on lesbians, perhaps because AIDS didn’t provide the same urgent impetus for studying female sexuality. But the research that has been conducted has yielded some interesting, though decidedly cloudy, results. According to some studies, lesbians are more likely to have homosexual relatives than nonlesbians. They also have notably longer bone growth in their arms, legs, and hands, hinting that they had greater androgen exposure during development, according to James Martin, a physiologist with Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California. Another indicator comes in a 2003 study in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience that measured something called “prepulse inhibition,” which is the part of our startle mechanism that’s believed to defy practice or training—something hardwired, in other words. Men tend to blink less than women in such experiments; gay and heterosexual men had similar responses, but lesbians, it turns out, were more like men than not.
In many other studies, though, lesbians have appeared less unique than gay men, leading some people to wonder if their sexual orientation is innate. Michael Bailey—who, as a heterosexual researcher, is a minority in this field—even doubts the existence of female sexual orientation, if by orientation we mean a fundamental drive that defies our conscious choices. He bases this provocative gambit on a sexual-arousal study he and his students conducted. When shown pornographic videos, men have an undeniable response either to gay or straight images but not both, according to sensitive gauges attached to their genitals—it’s that binary. Female sexual response is more democratic, opaque, and unpredictable: Arousal itself is harder to track, and there is evidence that it defies easy categorization. “I don’t yet understand female partner choices very well, and neither does anyone else,” Bailey wrote me in an e-mail. “What I do think it’s time to do is admit that female sexuality looks in some ways very different from male sexuality, and that there is no clear analog in women of men’s directed sexual-arousal pattern, which I think is their sexual orientation. I am not sure that women don’t have a sexual orientation, but it is certainly unclear that they do.”
He contends that what they have instead is sexual preference—they might prefer sex with women, but something in their brains can still sizzle at the thought of men. Many feminist scholars agree with this assessment, and consider sexuality more of a fluid than an either-or proposition, but some don’t. “I think women do have orientations, but they don’t circumscribe the range of desires that women can experience to the same degree as men,” says Lisa Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, who is writing a book on the subject. “For women, there’s more wiggle room. You can think of orientation as defining a range of possible responses, and for women, it’s much broader.”
Bailey stops short of saying that lesbianism is a myth (although he has notoriously declared that true male bisexuality doesn’t exist and dismissed many transgender people as peculiar sexual fetishists, drawing lasting enmity from gay and trans groups). But it may be less hard-wired. And it appears to have separate triggers and correlates that haven’t been identified yet. In studies of twins, there is a lower correlation of sexual orientation between female siblings than male siblings, for instance. “We’re at a place,” agrees Diamond, “where everyone agrees that whatever is going on is quite distinct between the sexes.”
I suppose the main upside to this kind of work, besides any impact it might have on securing gay rights, is the comfort of self-knowledge. The secrets lurking in the hypothalamus (and the ring finger and the hair whorl) aren’t just about who we desire but about a more fundamental organization of our personalities, individually and collectively.
Still, some have dismissed all this field-guide work as wrongheaded. Gaydar can no more be proved than a sixth sense, they say. What’s being classified as fundamentally gay is nothing more than cultural signals that vary so much from one part of the world to another that they’re worthless as clues to anything. It is surely true that gaydar has its blind spots. When I traveled through Nigeria a few years ago, I was unable after nearly a month to say with any conviction that I had encountered any gay people along my way. No knowing eye contact, no species recognition. (Then again, it’s not as if I was able to measure index-to-ring finger ratios.)
Where were they all? In Lagos, the morning newspaper offered an answer. According to a tiny news squib, a court had just convicted a young man of sodomy and sentenced him to death by stoning. Two other death sentences were handed down to gay people in the few days before I boarded my airplane. I paid a visit to one of the top human-rights agencies in the country and asked why they weren’t protesting these cases. The director looked at me dumbstruck. “Because sodomy,” he said as if speaking to a child, “is illegal.” To survive, they were hiding, even from me—they had edited down their gendermaps to the barest minimum and disappeared.
Still, Dr. Lippa, the hair-whorl researcher, is publishing a paper in the Archives of Sexual Behavior later this year that seems to prove the existence of gay-typical behavior across the globe. Lippa is looking at a 2005 BBC Internet survey, part of a BBC documentary project called Secrets of the Sexes, which included more than 200,000 respondents in 53 countries answering questions about everything from their occupational interests to their sexual histories and personalities. Lippa, a tall and slender man who came out to his parents in his thirties, analyzed the data first along gender lines, then compared straight people to gay people. What he found, he says, is a cross-cultural confirmation of what amount to stereotypes.
“It probably comes as no shock to you that on average men say they’re interested in being mechanics, or electrical engineers, or construction workers, whereas on average women are more interested in, say, being an interior decorator or a social worker or an artist,” he tells me. “Similarly, the differences between gay men and straight men are pretty large. On average, gay men are interested more in what you would consider female-typical occupations and hobbies than straight men. Same with women. It’s not universal. Some gay men like football games and like working on cars and are electrical engineers. But a large majority answer this way.”
It could be that his study says more about the limited number of vocations where gay men feel comfortable expressing themselves, and we might be equally drawn to construction sites if we thought we might be accepted there. It could be that the study says as much about the globalization of culture as the biological nature of gayness.
Even Lippa hesitates to say that gay people are essentially different from straight. “Essentialism,” he explains, “is the enemy of a lot of academics,” because it shuts down inquiry into all the possible influences. Perhaps there are a dozen possible routes to homosexuality, any combination of which might produce a number of the traits being catalogued now. It might be that there is no single thing called homosexuality—that there are instead dozens of homosexualities, scores of potential outcomes in terms of personality, and endless potentials for describing them. “For example, do gay men who have older brothers show more or less feminine? Do gay men with counterclockwise hair have more masculine traits? One cause might create a more feminine homosexuality than another.”
Of course, biology doesn’t determine everything. And some critics of sexual-orientation researchers blame them for minimizing the role of experience in determining our affectional course in life. The feminist biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling has waged a constant battle against their research, which she calls “a big house of cards” that ignores the power of environment in creating personality. Nurture, she argues, can and should be studied as a link to sexual orientation. The baby penguin raised by her two dads is a potential case study—though genetically unrelated to either parent, in the last few mating seasons she has mated with another female.
The rush to declare a biological mandate is motivated by a political agenda, says Fausto-Sterling, the author of Sexing the Body, who is married to a woman after a marriage to a man. “For me and for any feminist, I think it’s a pretty fragile way to argue for human rights. I want to see the claims for gay rights made on moral, ethical, legal, and constitutional bases that don’t rely on a particular scientific view of sexual development.”
Especially if that view invites the opponents of gay people to consider dramatic interventions meant to stop the development of homosexual orientation in a fetus. What if prenatal tests were able to show a predisposition to gayness? How long would it be before some pharmaceutical company develops a patch to regulate hormone flow and direct the baby’s orientation? Michael Bailey, for one, isn’t troubled by the moral implications any more than he would oppose fetal screens for potential birth defects, though he quickly adds his personal belief that homosexuality is “a good” on par with heterosexuality. “There’s no reason to ban, or become hysterical about, selecting for heterosexuality,” he says. “That’s precisely what parenting is about: shaping the children to have traits the parents value.”
It’s bizarre to think some value systems might lump gayness in with—say—sickle-cell anemia or Down syndrome. As Matt Foreman from the Task Force put it, “It’s not playing with the number of toes you have; it’s really manipulating your very essence. So many people see gay people only in terms of sexual behavior, as opposed to what sexual orientation is really about, which is how you fit into the world. I don’t want to get mushy, but it’s about your soul.”
EXAMPLE D: Hand Dexterity (Male)Gay men and lesbians have a 50 percent greater chance of being left-handed or ambidextrous than their straight counterparts.
(Derek: I am purely right-handed, but the bf is ambidextrous.)
Ironically, AIDS had also given LeVay opportunity. Before the epidemic, cadavers available for dissecting came with scant personal background besides age and cause of death. But because AIDS was still largely a gay disease, it was possible for the first time to do detailed neuroanatomical studies on the bodies of known gay men. (Being lucky enough to have no proprietary cause of death, lesbians were excluded from the study.)
LeVay decided to make the first detailed comparison of the brain’s hypothalamus, a small region at the base of the brain responsible for regulating everything from blood pressure and body temperature to hunger and wake-sleep cycles. And because it’s awash in more hormones than any other part of the brain, it also helps control emotions and sex drive and enjoys a reputation among neurologists, as LeVay noted in his book The Sexual Brain, for being “haunted by animal spirits and the ghosts of primal urges.”
LeVay suspected the secret to sexual orientation might lurk there as well. It was already known that in (presumably straight) men, a cell cluster in the hypothalamus called INAH3 is more than twice the size of the cluster in (presumably straight) women, a distinction probably created during fetal development when male hormones begin acting on boy fetuses and the two genders embark on different biological courses. LeVay designed a study to see if there were any size differences inside gay brains. His results were startling and unexpected. In gay men, INAH3 is similar in size to straight women’s.
This finding challenged a lot of what scientists believed. “The brain was considered pretty hardwired,” says Roger Gorski, a neurobiologist at UCLA who researches sexual differentiation. “It was male or female, period. Then Simon’s study shows that there could be intermediates. That wasn’t just a watershed—it pushed the water over the waterfall.”
At the time, LeVay presented his findings with caution, acknowledging that HIV or AIDS medications might have been responsible for altering brain structure. But more recently, an important study of sheep brains has replicated his findings. Sheep are among 500 animal species where homosexuality has been documented. They are also among the few who practice exclusive homosexuality, like many humans. In any population of sheep, about 8 percent of males show exclusive homosexual behavior. Little is known about the romantic life of Sapphic sheep because ewes tend to express their sexual interests by standing entirely still, yielding no clues about their partner preferences.
Slicing open the brains of ten ewes, eight female-oriented rams, and nine males who preferred other rams, researchers in the Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine found nearly the same variations in hypothalamus that LeVay first noticed. Male sheep who were attracted to females had a significantly larger hypothalamus dimension than females or male-oriented males.
A second study in humans also found size differences, though less dramatic, in the hypothalamus cluster identified by LeVay. “There’s now more reason to think my results are right, that the gay brain has this distinction,” he says.
If LeVay’s research suggested that biology—not environment, vice, or sinfulness—was likely responsible for male homosexuality, the geneticist Dean Hamer, an author and molecular biologist at the National Institutes of Health, hoped to pinpoint the exact biological mechanism responsible. He scanned gene groups in pairs of gay siblings looking for sites where the relatives had inherited the same DNA more frequently than would be expected on the basis of chance. In 1993, he located a region in the human genome, called Xq28, that appeared to be associated with gayness, a finding that has generated some controversy among researchers who have not fully confirmed the results.
A large-scale study within the next year is expected to determine more conclusively if a gene (or genes) is linked to sexual orientation. Alan R. Sanders, a psychiatrist from Northwestern University, is enrolling 1,000 pairs of gay brothers in one of the largest sexual-orientation studies ever undertaken. With the experiment, funded by an NIH grant of over $1 million, Sanders will attempt to map genes that influence sexual orientation.
Why has it taken fourteen years to carry out such an investigation? Hamer says there is very little research money, and almost no glory, to be gained in the hunt for gayness. “At about the same time as Xq28 came out, we found another gene involved in anxiety—the target gene for Prozac, and since that time, there have been now almost 800 peer-reviewed publications on that gene. Whereas for the gay gene, every experiment has been done by three or four students, most of them my students.”
One of the riddles still vexing geneticists is why only 50 percent of gay identical twins share a sexual orientation with their sibling, despite being genetically identical. “We know from all sorts of research that it’s not your upbringing, not relationship with parents or siblings, not early-childhood sexual experiences and whether you go to a Catholic school or not,” says Sven Bocklandt, a geneticist at UCLA.
“What I believe is that it is the ‘epigenetics environment,’ meaning the environment on top of our DNA—meaning the way that the gene is regulated. If you have identical twins, the genes are identical, but they are used differently. Every man and every woman has all the genes to make a vagina and womb and penis and testicles. In the same way, arguably, every man and woman has the genetic code for the brain networks that make you attracted to men and to women. You activate one or the other—and if you activate the wrong one, you’re gay.”
I can’t ignore Bocklandt’s use of the word wrong in relation to gay genetic codes. I don’t believe Bocklandt has any agenda in his work beyond scientific exploration, nor do I have any reason to believe he is anti-gay. Rather, Bocklandt is driven, as he likes to say, by a voracious curiosity about all sorts of sexual orientations. “This is not about a gay gene,” he says. “This is about sexual attraction, and about love. And about why crocodiles mate and why pigeons mate. It’s amazing to me that we don’t understand how that works. It’s so fundamental. Life on Earth would be very different if heterosexuality didn’t exist. That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
But every discovery in this field ignites a new discussion of morality. Politically, there is something very powerful about the notion that sexual orientation is a matter of biology, not choice. In poll after poll, of the one third of Americans who believe homosexuality is socially influenced, in other words “a choice,” about 70 percent think being gay is “not acceptable.” But for those who believe it is biologically mandated, the statistic reverses, and four out of five Americans find gayness “acceptable.”
As Bocklandt’s slip of the tongue illustrates, subtle judgments abound in the field. It is true that homosexuality does not make a whole lot of sense biologically. It lacks an obvious purpose. That’s the reason evolution-theory scholars call it “maladaptive” and radio shock jock Laura Schlessinger labeled it a “biological error.”
But Stanford biology professor Joan Roughgarden points out in her book Evolution’s Rainbow that most homosexual activity in the animal kingdom serves a fundamentally social purpose. Japanese macaques, for instance, live in female-only societies, arranged in rigid hierarchies. Power and cohesion are established through lesbian couplings, which can last up to four days and seem to prevent violence and aggression. Among many species, in fact, gayness seems to facilitate complex societies. One species of bird has males, females, and “marriage brokers” of a third gender, there to keep the species perpetuating. As adolescents, male bottlenose dolphins perform a kind of oral sex on one another—or in threesomes or foursomes—in rituals that create lifelong friendships and defense partnerships against sharks and other predators.
If we identify how sexual orientation is set in utero, doesn’t that suggest a future in which gay people can be prevented?
But for most in the animal kingdom, same-sex pairing is either fleeting or situational. Even Silo and Roy, for six years the poster-penguins for same-sex love in the Central Park Zoo—they famously raised a daughter together—were not destined to last forever. Silo waddled off with a female named Scrappy in 2005, says zoo director Dan Wharton, adding that we shouldn’t worry about Roy’s hurt feelings. “Penguins are matter-of-fact about these things.”
That still leaves a million questions about those gay rams and humans like me, who fall on the far edge of Alfred Kinsey’s sexual-orientation scale, exclusively gay. In a universe in which we look for purpose in order to appoint value, what is the purpose of my gayness?
Dean Hamer sees one possible answer in the fraternal-birth-order studies. “In Polynesian cultures, where you’re talking about very big families, it was typical to have the last-born son be mahu, or gay,” he says. Explorers described young boys who looked after the family and sometimes dressed as girls. “They suspected that their families had made them that way. But you just can’t take a guy and make him clean up and have him become gay. He’s got to have some gayness inside. Maybe that’s the biological purpose to the mahu: taking care of Mom.”
He says this half in jest, I think, but some other evidence bolsters his argument, including the appearance of transgender younger sons among Native Americans (the so-called two-spirits) and in premodern corners of India, Samoa, and Indonesia. A survey published this year suggested that transgender fa’afafines in Samoa are more “avuncular” than heterosexuals—that is, more likely to care for kin. Another study says that female relatives of gay men may have more children; perhaps the very thing that makes their brothers and sons gay makes them more fertile, an ideal situation with extra babysitters on hand. You can slice this stuff any way you want.
(Derek: Here comes the lesbian part. If you're not interested, you can skip the next 4 paragraphs, but they are darn interesting stuff too. Like I have always believed, women doesn't have a fixed orientation like guys, not so hard-wired in the brain.)
Fewer studies have focused specifically on lesbians, perhaps because AIDS didn’t provide the same urgent impetus for studying female sexuality. But the research that has been conducted has yielded some interesting, though decidedly cloudy, results. According to some studies, lesbians are more likely to have homosexual relatives than nonlesbians. They also have notably longer bone growth in their arms, legs, and hands, hinting that they had greater androgen exposure during development, according to James Martin, a physiologist with Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California. Another indicator comes in a 2003 study in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience that measured something called “prepulse inhibition,” which is the part of our startle mechanism that’s believed to defy practice or training—something hardwired, in other words. Men tend to blink less than women in such experiments; gay and heterosexual men had similar responses, but lesbians, it turns out, were more like men than not.
In many other studies, though, lesbians have appeared less unique than gay men, leading some people to wonder if their sexual orientation is innate. Michael Bailey—who, as a heterosexual researcher, is a minority in this field—even doubts the existence of female sexual orientation, if by orientation we mean a fundamental drive that defies our conscious choices. He bases this provocative gambit on a sexual-arousal study he and his students conducted. When shown pornographic videos, men have an undeniable response either to gay or straight images but not both, according to sensitive gauges attached to their genitals—it’s that binary. Female sexual response is more democratic, opaque, and unpredictable: Arousal itself is harder to track, and there is evidence that it defies easy categorization. “I don’t yet understand female partner choices very well, and neither does anyone else,” Bailey wrote me in an e-mail. “What I do think it’s time to do is admit that female sexuality looks in some ways very different from male sexuality, and that there is no clear analog in women of men’s directed sexual-arousal pattern, which I think is their sexual orientation. I am not sure that women don’t have a sexual orientation, but it is certainly unclear that they do.”
He contends that what they have instead is sexual preference—they might prefer sex with women, but something in their brains can still sizzle at the thought of men. Many feminist scholars agree with this assessment, and consider sexuality more of a fluid than an either-or proposition, but some don’t. “I think women do have orientations, but they don’t circumscribe the range of desires that women can experience to the same degree as men,” says Lisa Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, who is writing a book on the subject. “For women, there’s more wiggle room. You can think of orientation as defining a range of possible responses, and for women, it’s much broader.”
Bailey stops short of saying that lesbianism is a myth (although he has notoriously declared that true male bisexuality doesn’t exist and dismissed many transgender people as peculiar sexual fetishists, drawing lasting enmity from gay and trans groups). But it may be less hard-wired. And it appears to have separate triggers and correlates that haven’t been identified yet. In studies of twins, there is a lower correlation of sexual orientation between female siblings than male siblings, for instance. “We’re at a place,” agrees Diamond, “where everyone agrees that whatever is going on is quite distinct between the sexes.”
I suppose the main upside to this kind of work, besides any impact it might have on securing gay rights, is the comfort of self-knowledge. The secrets lurking in the hypothalamus (and the ring finger and the hair whorl) aren’t just about who we desire but about a more fundamental organization of our personalities, individually and collectively.
Still, some have dismissed all this field-guide work as wrongheaded. Gaydar can no more be proved than a sixth sense, they say. What’s being classified as fundamentally gay is nothing more than cultural signals that vary so much from one part of the world to another that they’re worthless as clues to anything. It is surely true that gaydar has its blind spots. When I traveled through Nigeria a few years ago, I was unable after nearly a month to say with any conviction that I had encountered any gay people along my way. No knowing eye contact, no species recognition. (Then again, it’s not as if I was able to measure index-to-ring finger ratios.)
Where were they all? In Lagos, the morning newspaper offered an answer. According to a tiny news squib, a court had just convicted a young man of sodomy and sentenced him to death by stoning. Two other death sentences were handed down to gay people in the few days before I boarded my airplane. I paid a visit to one of the top human-rights agencies in the country and asked why they weren’t protesting these cases. The director looked at me dumbstruck. “Because sodomy,” he said as if speaking to a child, “is illegal.” To survive, they were hiding, even from me—they had edited down their gendermaps to the barest minimum and disappeared.
Still, Dr. Lippa, the hair-whorl researcher, is publishing a paper in the Archives of Sexual Behavior later this year that seems to prove the existence of gay-typical behavior across the globe. Lippa is looking at a 2005 BBC Internet survey, part of a BBC documentary project called Secrets of the Sexes, which included more than 200,000 respondents in 53 countries answering questions about everything from their occupational interests to their sexual histories and personalities. Lippa, a tall and slender man who came out to his parents in his thirties, analyzed the data first along gender lines, then compared straight people to gay people. What he found, he says, is a cross-cultural confirmation of what amount to stereotypes.
“It probably comes as no shock to you that on average men say they’re interested in being mechanics, or electrical engineers, or construction workers, whereas on average women are more interested in, say, being an interior decorator or a social worker or an artist,” he tells me. “Similarly, the differences between gay men and straight men are pretty large. On average, gay men are interested more in what you would consider female-typical occupations and hobbies than straight men. Same with women. It’s not universal. Some gay men like football games and like working on cars and are electrical engineers. But a large majority answer this way.”
It could be that his study says more about the limited number of vocations where gay men feel comfortable expressing themselves, and we might be equally drawn to construction sites if we thought we might be accepted there. It could be that the study says as much about the globalization of culture as the biological nature of gayness.
Even Lippa hesitates to say that gay people are essentially different from straight. “Essentialism,” he explains, “is the enemy of a lot of academics,” because it shuts down inquiry into all the possible influences. Perhaps there are a dozen possible routes to homosexuality, any combination of which might produce a number of the traits being catalogued now. It might be that there is no single thing called homosexuality—that there are instead dozens of homosexualities, scores of potential outcomes in terms of personality, and endless potentials for describing them. “For example, do gay men who have older brothers show more or less feminine? Do gay men with counterclockwise hair have more masculine traits? One cause might create a more feminine homosexuality than another.”
Of course, biology doesn’t determine everything. And some critics of sexual-orientation researchers blame them for minimizing the role of experience in determining our affectional course in life. The feminist biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling has waged a constant battle against their research, which she calls “a big house of cards” that ignores the power of environment in creating personality. Nurture, she argues, can and should be studied as a link to sexual orientation. The baby penguin raised by her two dads is a potential case study—though genetically unrelated to either parent, in the last few mating seasons she has mated with another female.
The rush to declare a biological mandate is motivated by a political agenda, says Fausto-Sterling, the author of Sexing the Body, who is married to a woman after a marriage to a man. “For me and for any feminist, I think it’s a pretty fragile way to argue for human rights. I want to see the claims for gay rights made on moral, ethical, legal, and constitutional bases that don’t rely on a particular scientific view of sexual development.”
Especially if that view invites the opponents of gay people to consider dramatic interventions meant to stop the development of homosexual orientation in a fetus. What if prenatal tests were able to show a predisposition to gayness? How long would it be before some pharmaceutical company develops a patch to regulate hormone flow and direct the baby’s orientation? Michael Bailey, for one, isn’t troubled by the moral implications any more than he would oppose fetal screens for potential birth defects, though he quickly adds his personal belief that homosexuality is “a good” on par with heterosexuality. “There’s no reason to ban, or become hysterical about, selecting for heterosexuality,” he says. “That’s precisely what parenting is about: shaping the children to have traits the parents value.”
It’s bizarre to think some value systems might lump gayness in with—say—sickle-cell anemia or Down syndrome. As Matt Foreman from the Task Force put it, “It’s not playing with the number of toes you have; it’s really manipulating your very essence. So many people see gay people only in terms of sexual behavior, as opposed to what sexual orientation is really about, which is how you fit into the world. I don’t want to get mushy, but it’s about your soul.”
The Science of Gaydar Pt 1
Interesting article in the New York Magazine, called The Science of Gaydar.
It's quite long, so I'll post it here in two parts. But it's really interesting and you can go read it on your own if you can't wait. Based on my own research and then coming to my own conclusions, the latest findings seem to agree to what I believe. We're all born gay (nature) and it all started in our mothers' womb.
I'm not denying the effects of the environment (nurture) but my guess is, it probably has less than 20% effect on our orientation.
Gays who had been sexually abused by men when they were younger would probably disagree. But really, I doubt that they would turn out straight, even if they were not molested. It probably seem like childhood sexual molestation caused gayness because gay men are more likely and ready to admit so, as how many straight men would admit the same thing?
Oh, apparently one of the findings is that gay men tend to have thicker and longer penises than straight men ;P
The Science of Gaydar
If sexual orientation is biological, are the traits that make people seem gay innate, too? The new research on everything from voice pitch to hair whorl.
By David France
EXAMPLE A: Hair Whorl (Men)
I once placed a personal ad in which I described myself as “gay-acting/gay-appearing,” partly as a jab at my peers who prefer to be thought of as “str8” but mostly because it’s just who I am. Maybe a better way to phrase it would have been “third-sexer,” the category advanced by the gay German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld 100 years ago. The label fell into disrepute, but lately a number of well-known researchers in the field of sexual orientation have been reviving it based on an extensive new body of research showing that most of us, whether top or bottom, butch or femme, or somewhere in between, share a kind of physical otherness that locates us in our own quadrant of the gender matrix, more like one another than not. Whatever that otherness is seems to come from somewhere deep within us. It mostly defies our efforts to disguise it. That’s what we mean by gaydar—not the skill of the viewer so much as the telltale signs most gay people project, the set of traits that make us unmistakably one.
The late psychologist and sexologist John Money famously called these the details of our “gendermaps,” which he believed are drawn primarily by life’s experience and social conditioning. Money planted some of the earliest flags in the nature-versus-nurture war by claiming that dysfunctional parents, not inborn biology, is what produced “sissy boys,” tomboys, and other gender variants. But today, the pendulum has swung just about as far in the other direction as possible. A small constellation of researchers is specifically analyzing the traits and characteristics that, though more pronounced in some than in others, not only make us gay but also make us appear gay.
At first read, their findings seem like a string of unlinked, esoteric observations. Statistically, for instance, gay men and lesbians have about a 50 percent greater chance of being left-handed or ambidextrous than straight men or women. The relative lengths of our fingers offer another hint: The index fingers of most straight men are shorter than their ring fingers, while for most women they are closer in length, or even reversed in ratio. But some researchers have noted that gay men are likely to have finger-length ratios more in line with those of straight women, and a study of self-described “butch” lesbians showed significantly masculinized ratios.
The same goes for the way we hear, the way we process spatial reasoning, and even the ring of our voices. One study, involving tape-recordings of gay and straight men, found that 75 percent of gay men sounded gay to a general audience. It’s unclear what the listeners responded to, whether there is a recognized gay “accent” or vocal quality. And there is no hint as to whether this idiosyncrasy is owed to biology or cultural influences—only that it’s unmistakable. What is there in Rufus Wainwright’s “uninhibited, yearning, ugly-duckling voice,” as the Los Angeles Times wrote a few weeks ago, that we recognize as uniquely gay? Does biology account for Rosie O’Donnell’s crisp trumpet and Charles Nelson Reilly’s gnyuck-gnyuck-gnyuck?
“These are all part and parcel of the idea that being gay is different—that we are different animals to some extent,” says Simon LeVay, the British-born neuroscientist who has dedicated himself to studying these issues. “Hirschfeld was right. I support the idea that we’re a third sex—or a third sex and a fourth sex, gay men and lesbians. Today, there’s scientific documentation behind this.”
EXAMPLE B: Thumbprint Density (Male)
I was surprised at how many people quickly agreed to lend five minutes of their pride celebration to science. “If I could tell my mother it’s a gene, she would be so happy,” said one, Scott Quesada, 42, who sat in a chair for Lippa’s inspection.
“Classic counterclockwise whorl,” the researcher pronounced, snapping a photo.
Quesada, who is right-handed and seemed to have a typically masculinized finger-length ratio, was impressed. “I didn’t know I had a whorl at all,” he said.
By the end of the two-day festival, Lippa had gathered survey data from more than 50 short-haired men and photographed their pates (women were excluded because their hairstyles, even at the pride festival, were too long for simple determination; crewcuts are the ideal Rorschach, he explains). About 23 percent had counterclockwise hair whorls. In the general population, that figure is 8 percent.
A string of other studies, most of them conducted quietly and with small budgets, has offered up a number of other biological indicators. According to this research, for instance, gay men, like straight women, have an increased density of fingerprint ridges on the thumb and the pinkie of the left hand; and overall their arms, legs, and hands are smaller relative to stature (among whites but not blacks). There are technical differences in the way most men and most women hear, except among lesbians, whose ears function more like men’s. And there are gender-based cognitive differences in which gay men appear more like women. One involves mentally rotating a 3-D object, something males tend to do better than females—except gay men score more like straight women and lesbians function more like straight men. In navigational tasks and verbal-fluency tests, gay men and lesbians tend to have sex-atypical scores.
From these findings, it might be tempting to conclude that lesbians are universally masculinized and gay men are somehow feminized—the classic “inversion model” of homosexuality advanced by Freud. But the picture is more complicated than that. There is also evidence—some more silly-sounding than serious—that homosexuals may be simultaneously more feminine and more masculine, respectively. The stereotypes—that lesbians tend to commit to relationships early and have little interest in casual sex; that gay men have more sexual partners than their counterparts—turn out to be true.
One study that supports the hyper-masculinity theory of male homosexuality involves penis size. An Ontario-based psychological researcher named Anthony Bogaert re-sorted Kinsey Institute data—in which 5,000 men answered detailed questions about their sex lives, practices, fantasies, and, it turns out, measurements of their erect organs—along sexual-orientation lines. Gay men’s penises were thicker (4.95 inches versus 4.80) and longer (6.32 inches versus 5.99). The measurements, it should be noted, were self-reported and perhaps involve reporting bias, but no one has done a study investigating whether gay men are more prone to exaggerating their assets, so, well, draw your own conclusions.
But if true, these findings negate the inversion model, Bogaert says. Instead of picturing gender and orientation along a line, with straight men and women on either end and gay people in the middle, he suggests, a matrix might be a more accurate way to map the possibilities.
Some of this work has been derided as modern-day phrenology, and obviously possessing one trait or another—a counterclockwise hair whorl here, an elongated ring finger there—doesn’t necessarily make a person gay or straight. But researchers point out that these are statistical averages from the community as a whole. And the cumulative findings support the belief now widely held in the scientific community that sexual orientation—perhaps along with the characteristics we typically associate with gayness—is biological. “We’re reaching a consensus on a broad question,” says J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University. Is sexual orientation “something we’re born with or something we largely acquire through social experience? The answer is clear. It’s something we’re born with.”
Because many of these newly identified “gay” traits and characteristics are known to be influenced in utero, researchers think they may be narrowing in on when gayness is set—and identifying its possible triggers. They believe that homosexuality may be the result of some interaction between a pregnant mother and her fetus. Several hypothetical mechanisms have been identified, most pointing to an alteration in the flow of male hormones in the formation of boys and female hormones in the gestation of girls. What causes this? Nobody has any direct evidence one way or another, but a list of suspects includes germs, genes, maternal stress, and even allergy—maybe the mother mounts some immunological response to the fetal hormones.
EXAMPLE C: Digit Proportions (Female)
The index fingers of most straight men are shorter than their ring fingers, and for most women they are the same length or longer. Gay men and lesbians tend to have reversed ratios.
(Derek: This one I'm sure, coz I can measure. Mine is same length.)
Immunological response is the ascendant theory, in fact. We know from a string of surveys that in any family, the second-born son is 33 percent more likely than the first to be gay, and the third is 33 percent more likely than the second, and so on, as though there is some sort of “maternal memory,” similar to the way antibodies are memories of an infection. Perhaps she mounts a more effective immunological response to fetal hormones with each new male fetus.
To determine whether the fraternal birth order might also suggest that baby brothers are treated differently in a way that impacts their sexual expression, researchers have studied boys who weren’t raised in their biological families, or who may have been firstborn but grew up as the youngest in Brady Bunch–type homes. In every permutation, the results were the same: What mattered was only how many boys had occupied your mother’s uterus before you.
Some of this research may prove to be significant; some will ultimately get chalked up to coincidence. But the thrust of these developing findings puts activists in a bind and brings gay rights to a major crossroads, perhaps its most significant since the American Psychiatric Association voted to declassify homosexuality as a disease in 1973. If sexual orientation is biological, and we are learning to identify how it happens inside the uterus, doesn’t it suggest a future in which gay people can be prevented? This spring, R. Albert Mohler Jr., the president of a Southern Baptist theological seminary in Kentucky and one of the country’s leading Evangelical voices, advocated just that. “We want to understand why some persons will struggle with that particular sin,” he explained. “If there is a way we can help with the struggle, we should certainly be open to it, the same way we would help alcoholics deal with their temptation.”
That in part is why gay people have not hungered for this breakthrough. Late last year, Martina Navratilova joined activists from PETA to speak out against an experiment that sought to intentionally turn sheep gay (it failed, but another experiment successfully turned ferrets into homosexuals, and the sexual orientations of fruit flies have been switched in laboratories). Some 20,000 angry e-mails clogged the researchers’ inboxes, comparing the work to Nazi eugenics and arguing that it held no promise of any kind to gay people. “There are positives, but many negatives” to this kind of research, says Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “I will bet my life that if a quote-unquote cure was found, that the religious right would have no problem with genetic or other kind of prenatal manipulations. People who don’t think that’s a clear and present danger are simply not living in reality.”
At the dawn of gay politics a half-century ago, the government treated gay people as a menace to national security, and much of the public, kept from any ordinary depictions of gay life, lived in terror of encountering one of us. It was routine, and reliably successful, for defendants in murder cases to prevail by alleging they were fending off a gay assault. (If confronted by the pathology of homosexuality, jurors believed, force was not only appropriate but utterly forgivable.) Back then, many psychiatrists treated homosexuality with shock therapy, detention, or a mind-twisting intervention called “aversion therapy”—a practice that was still in vogue in the late seventies, when a lumpy-faced psychiatrist put me through a regimen of staring at Playboy centerfolds.
The groundwork for change began when Evelyn Hooker, a UCLA psychologist, was approached by a gay former student in the fifties. He had noticed that all research on homosexuals looked at men and women who were imprisoned or institutionalized, thereby advancing the belief that homosexuals were abnormal. He proposed that she study men like him as a counterpoint. Over the next two decades, she did just that, proving that none of the known psychological screens could detect a healthy gay person—that there was no clinical pathology to sexual orientation. Of necessity, research at the time was focused on demonstrating how unremarkable gay men and lesbians are: indistinguishable on all personality inventories, equally good at all jobs, benign as parents, unthreatening as neighbors, and so on. On the strength of Hooker’s findings, and a Gandhian effort by activists, the APA changed its view on homosexuals 34 years ago.
Thereafter, the field of sexual-orientation research fell dormant until 1991, when Simon LeVay conducted the very first study of homosexual biological uniqueness. He had been a researcher at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, when his lover fell ill with AIDS. He took a year off to care for him, but his partner ultimately died. Returning to work, LeVay decided he wanted to concentrate on gay themes. “Just like a lot of gay people who’d been directly affected by the epidemic, I felt a desire to do something more relevant to my identity as a gay man,” says LeVay. “Some people have said I was out to try and prove that it wasn’t my fault that I was gay. I reject that. In my case, since neuroscience was my work, that just seemed like the way to go.”
It's quite long, so I'll post it here in two parts. But it's really interesting and you can go read it on your own if you can't wait. Based on my own research and then coming to my own conclusions, the latest findings seem to agree to what I believe. We're all born gay (nature) and it all started in our mothers' womb.
I'm not denying the effects of the environment (nurture) but my guess is, it probably has less than 20% effect on our orientation.
Gays who had been sexually abused by men when they were younger would probably disagree. But really, I doubt that they would turn out straight, even if they were not molested. It probably seem like childhood sexual molestation caused gayness because gay men are more likely and ready to admit so, as how many straight men would admit the same thing?
Oh, apparently one of the findings is that gay men tend to have thicker and longer penises than straight men ;P
The Science of Gaydar
If sexual orientation is biological, are the traits that make people seem gay innate, too? The new research on everything from voice pitch to hair whorl.
By David France
EXAMPLE A: Hair Whorl (Men)Gay men are more likely than straight men to have a counterclockwise whorl. Photographs by Mark Mahaney
(Derek : I'm not sure about mine; someone need to check for me.)
As a presence in the world—a body hanging from a subway strap or pressed into an elevator, a figure crossing the street—I am neither markedly masculine nor notably effeminate. Nor am I typically perceived as androgynous, not in my uniform of Diesels and boots, not even when I was younger and favored dangling earrings and bright Jack Purcells. But most people immediately read me (correctly) as gay. It takes only a glance to make my truth obvious. I know this from strangers who find gay people offensive enough to elicit a remark—catcalls from cab windows, to use a recent example—as well as from countless casual social engagements in which people easily assume my orientation, no sensitive gaydar necessary. I’m not so much out-of-the-closet as “self-evident,” to use Quentin Crisp’s phrase, although being of a younger generation, I can’t subscribe to his belief that it is a kind of disfigurement requiring lavender hair rinse.
(Derek : I'm not sure about mine; someone need to check for me.)
As a presence in the world—a body hanging from a subway strap or pressed into an elevator, a figure crossing the street—I am neither markedly masculine nor notably effeminate. Nor am I typically perceived as androgynous, not in my uniform of Diesels and boots, not even when I was younger and favored dangling earrings and bright Jack Purcells. But most people immediately read me (correctly) as gay. It takes only a glance to make my truth obvious. I know this from strangers who find gay people offensive enough to elicit a remark—catcalls from cab windows, to use a recent example—as well as from countless casual social engagements in which people easily assume my orientation, no sensitive gaydar necessary. I’m not so much out-of-the-closet as “self-evident,” to use Quentin Crisp’s phrase, although being of a younger generation, I can’t subscribe to his belief that it is a kind of disfigurement requiring lavender hair rinse.
I once placed a personal ad in which I described myself as “gay-acting/gay-appearing,” partly as a jab at my peers who prefer to be thought of as “str8” but mostly because it’s just who I am. Maybe a better way to phrase it would have been “third-sexer,” the category advanced by the gay German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld 100 years ago. The label fell into disrepute, but lately a number of well-known researchers in the field of sexual orientation have been reviving it based on an extensive new body of research showing that most of us, whether top or bottom, butch or femme, or somewhere in between, share a kind of physical otherness that locates us in our own quadrant of the gender matrix, more like one another than not. Whatever that otherness is seems to come from somewhere deep within us. It mostly defies our efforts to disguise it. That’s what we mean by gaydar—not the skill of the viewer so much as the telltale signs most gay people project, the set of traits that make us unmistakably one.
The late psychologist and sexologist John Money famously called these the details of our “gendermaps,” which he believed are drawn primarily by life’s experience and social conditioning. Money planted some of the earliest flags in the nature-versus-nurture war by claiming that dysfunctional parents, not inborn biology, is what produced “sissy boys,” tomboys, and other gender variants. But today, the pendulum has swung just about as far in the other direction as possible. A small constellation of researchers is specifically analyzing the traits and characteristics that, though more pronounced in some than in others, not only make us gay but also make us appear gay.
At first read, their findings seem like a string of unlinked, esoteric observations. Statistically, for instance, gay men and lesbians have about a 50 percent greater chance of being left-handed or ambidextrous than straight men or women. The relative lengths of our fingers offer another hint: The index fingers of most straight men are shorter than their ring fingers, while for most women they are closer in length, or even reversed in ratio. But some researchers have noted that gay men are likely to have finger-length ratios more in line with those of straight women, and a study of self-described “butch” lesbians showed significantly masculinized ratios.
The same goes for the way we hear, the way we process spatial reasoning, and even the ring of our voices. One study, involving tape-recordings of gay and straight men, found that 75 percent of gay men sounded gay to a general audience. It’s unclear what the listeners responded to, whether there is a recognized gay “accent” or vocal quality. And there is no hint as to whether this idiosyncrasy is owed to biology or cultural influences—only that it’s unmistakable. What is there in Rufus Wainwright’s “uninhibited, yearning, ugly-duckling voice,” as the Los Angeles Times wrote a few weeks ago, that we recognize as uniquely gay? Does biology account for Rosie O’Donnell’s crisp trumpet and Charles Nelson Reilly’s gnyuck-gnyuck-gnyuck?
“These are all part and parcel of the idea that being gay is different—that we are different animals to some extent,” says Simon LeVay, the British-born neuroscientist who has dedicated himself to studying these issues. “Hirschfeld was right. I support the idea that we’re a third sex—or a third sex and a fourth sex, gay men and lesbians. Today, there’s scientific documentation behind this.”
EXAMPLE B: Thumbprint Density (Male)Gay men and straight women have an increased density of fingerprint ridges on the thumb and pinkie of the left hand.
(Derek: I'm not sure either, but I remember mine looks more like the on one the left)
(Derek: I'm not sure either, but I remember mine looks more like the on one the left)
Richard Lippa, a psychologist from California State University at Fullerton, is one of the leading cataloguers of the many ways in which gay people are different. I caught up with him a few weeks ago at a booth at the Long Beach Pride Festival in Southern California, where he was researching another hypothesis—that the hair-whorl patterns on gay heads are more likely to go counterclockwise. If true, it will be one more clue to our biological uniqueness.
As he recruited experiment subjects, Lippa scanned the passing scalps, some shaved clean, some piled in colorful tresses. “It’s like a kind of art. You look at the back of people’s heads, and it’s literally like a vector field,” he says. “We assume that whatever causes people to be right-handed or left-handed is also causing hair whorl. The theory we’re testing is that there’s a common gene responsible for both.” And that gene might be a marker for sexual orientation. So, as part of his study, he has swabbed the inside cheek of his subjects. It will be months before that DNA testing is complete.
“Classic counterclockwise whorl,” the researcher pronounced, snapping a photo.
Quesada, who is right-handed and seemed to have a typically masculinized finger-length ratio, was impressed. “I didn’t know I had a whorl at all,” he said.
By the end of the two-day festival, Lippa had gathered survey data from more than 50 short-haired men and photographed their pates (women were excluded because their hairstyles, even at the pride festival, were too long for simple determination; crewcuts are the ideal Rorschach, he explains). About 23 percent had counterclockwise hair whorls. In the general population, that figure is 8 percent.
A string of other studies, most of them conducted quietly and with small budgets, has offered up a number of other biological indicators. According to this research, for instance, gay men, like straight women, have an increased density of fingerprint ridges on the thumb and the pinkie of the left hand; and overall their arms, legs, and hands are smaller relative to stature (among whites but not blacks). There are technical differences in the way most men and most women hear, except among lesbians, whose ears function more like men’s. And there are gender-based cognitive differences in which gay men appear more like women. One involves mentally rotating a 3-D object, something males tend to do better than females—except gay men score more like straight women and lesbians function more like straight men. In navigational tasks and verbal-fluency tests, gay men and lesbians tend to have sex-atypical scores.
From these findings, it might be tempting to conclude that lesbians are universally masculinized and gay men are somehow feminized—the classic “inversion model” of homosexuality advanced by Freud. But the picture is more complicated than that. There is also evidence—some more silly-sounding than serious—that homosexuals may be simultaneously more feminine and more masculine, respectively. The stereotypes—that lesbians tend to commit to relationships early and have little interest in casual sex; that gay men have more sexual partners than their counterparts—turn out to be true.
One study that supports the hyper-masculinity theory of male homosexuality involves penis size. An Ontario-based psychological researcher named Anthony Bogaert re-sorted Kinsey Institute data—in which 5,000 men answered detailed questions about their sex lives, practices, fantasies, and, it turns out, measurements of their erect organs—along sexual-orientation lines. Gay men’s penises were thicker (4.95 inches versus 4.80) and longer (6.32 inches versus 5.99). The measurements, it should be noted, were self-reported and perhaps involve reporting bias, but no one has done a study investigating whether gay men are more prone to exaggerating their assets, so, well, draw your own conclusions.
But if true, these findings negate the inversion model, Bogaert says. Instead of picturing gender and orientation along a line, with straight men and women on either end and gay people in the middle, he suggests, a matrix might be a more accurate way to map the possibilities.
Some of this work has been derided as modern-day phrenology, and obviously possessing one trait or another—a counterclockwise hair whorl here, an elongated ring finger there—doesn’t necessarily make a person gay or straight. But researchers point out that these are statistical averages from the community as a whole. And the cumulative findings support the belief now widely held in the scientific community that sexual orientation—perhaps along with the characteristics we typically associate with gayness—is biological. “We’re reaching a consensus on a broad question,” says J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University. Is sexual orientation “something we’re born with or something we largely acquire through social experience? The answer is clear. It’s something we’re born with.”
Because many of these newly identified “gay” traits and characteristics are known to be influenced in utero, researchers think they may be narrowing in on when gayness is set—and identifying its possible triggers. They believe that homosexuality may be the result of some interaction between a pregnant mother and her fetus. Several hypothetical mechanisms have been identified, most pointing to an alteration in the flow of male hormones in the formation of boys and female hormones in the gestation of girls. What causes this? Nobody has any direct evidence one way or another, but a list of suspects includes germs, genes, maternal stress, and even allergy—maybe the mother mounts some immunological response to the fetal hormones.
EXAMPLE C: Digit Proportions (Female)The index fingers of most straight men are shorter than their ring fingers, and for most women they are the same length or longer. Gay men and lesbians tend to have reversed ratios.
(Derek: This one I'm sure, coz I can measure. Mine is same length.)
Immunological response is the ascendant theory, in fact. We know from a string of surveys that in any family, the second-born son is 33 percent more likely than the first to be gay, and the third is 33 percent more likely than the second, and so on, as though there is some sort of “maternal memory,” similar to the way antibodies are memories of an infection. Perhaps she mounts a more effective immunological response to fetal hormones with each new male fetus.
To determine whether the fraternal birth order might also suggest that baby brothers are treated differently in a way that impacts their sexual expression, researchers have studied boys who weren’t raised in their biological families, or who may have been firstborn but grew up as the youngest in Brady Bunch–type homes. In every permutation, the results were the same: What mattered was only how many boys had occupied your mother’s uterus before you.
Some of this research may prove to be significant; some will ultimately get chalked up to coincidence. But the thrust of these developing findings puts activists in a bind and brings gay rights to a major crossroads, perhaps its most significant since the American Psychiatric Association voted to declassify homosexuality as a disease in 1973. If sexual orientation is biological, and we are learning to identify how it happens inside the uterus, doesn’t it suggest a future in which gay people can be prevented? This spring, R. Albert Mohler Jr., the president of a Southern Baptist theological seminary in Kentucky and one of the country’s leading Evangelical voices, advocated just that. “We want to understand why some persons will struggle with that particular sin,” he explained. “If there is a way we can help with the struggle, we should certainly be open to it, the same way we would help alcoholics deal with their temptation.”
That in part is why gay people have not hungered for this breakthrough. Late last year, Martina Navratilova joined activists from PETA to speak out against an experiment that sought to intentionally turn sheep gay (it failed, but another experiment successfully turned ferrets into homosexuals, and the sexual orientations of fruit flies have been switched in laboratories). Some 20,000 angry e-mails clogged the researchers’ inboxes, comparing the work to Nazi eugenics and arguing that it held no promise of any kind to gay people. “There are positives, but many negatives” to this kind of research, says Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “I will bet my life that if a quote-unquote cure was found, that the religious right would have no problem with genetic or other kind of prenatal manipulations. People who don’t think that’s a clear and present danger are simply not living in reality.”
A study found that 75 percent of gay men sounded gay to a general audience. Were they responding to a recognized gay “accent”?
At the dawn of gay politics a half-century ago, the government treated gay people as a menace to national security, and much of the public, kept from any ordinary depictions of gay life, lived in terror of encountering one of us. It was routine, and reliably successful, for defendants in murder cases to prevail by alleging they were fending off a gay assault. (If confronted by the pathology of homosexuality, jurors believed, force was not only appropriate but utterly forgivable.) Back then, many psychiatrists treated homosexuality with shock therapy, detention, or a mind-twisting intervention called “aversion therapy”—a practice that was still in vogue in the late seventies, when a lumpy-faced psychiatrist put me through a regimen of staring at Playboy centerfolds.
The groundwork for change began when Evelyn Hooker, a UCLA psychologist, was approached by a gay former student in the fifties. He had noticed that all research on homosexuals looked at men and women who were imprisoned or institutionalized, thereby advancing the belief that homosexuals were abnormal. He proposed that she study men like him as a counterpoint. Over the next two decades, she did just that, proving that none of the known psychological screens could detect a healthy gay person—that there was no clinical pathology to sexual orientation. Of necessity, research at the time was focused on demonstrating how unremarkable gay men and lesbians are: indistinguishable on all personality inventories, equally good at all jobs, benign as parents, unthreatening as neighbors, and so on. On the strength of Hooker’s findings, and a Gandhian effort by activists, the APA changed its view on homosexuals 34 years ago.
Thereafter, the field of sexual-orientation research fell dormant until 1991, when Simon LeVay conducted the very first study of homosexual biological uniqueness. He had been a researcher at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, when his lover fell ill with AIDS. He took a year off to care for him, but his partner ultimately died. Returning to work, LeVay decided he wanted to concentrate on gay themes. “Just like a lot of gay people who’d been directly affected by the epidemic, I felt a desire to do something more relevant to my identity as a gay man,” says LeVay. “Some people have said I was out to try and prove that it wasn’t my fault that I was gay. I reject that. In my case, since neuroscience was my work, that just seemed like the way to go.”
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Electric Dreams
I had a very interesting dream last night because I seldom have or remember them.
For the first time, Nyk was in it.
We were all at this rich colleague's house. I have been to her actual house before, which is a double story house in a gated community. In my dream, the house grew another two floors below. Basically, it was a huge house, with nice furnishings and many butlers and maids.
The group of use were staying over a few nights to go for outings somewhere. This part is a bit vague.
What I do remember is that I was sharing a room with an attaching bathroom, with a couple. A gay one at that. I was coming out from the shower and they were in the room. They went into the shower together and when they emerged, asked me whether I could leave the room or not.
And so I left.
In the dream, I was dating this high school friend of mine, who is completely straight. Well, I did harbour a crush on him back then, but it was only a little. There were another person whom I liked more at the time.
Anyway, I was dating him, Lanky Larry. For a straight person, he was treating m very well (Nyk said: Duh! He's dating you.) He still had this very heterosexual character and personality about him.
I got the feeling that, he's as straight as they come, except for the fact that he's dating me. He was like trying to win me over, but I wasn't warming up to him.
Surprisingly, Lanky Larry wasn't staying together with us at the posh house.
And where does Nyk come into play?
Nyk was staying in another room. He was still treating me very nice, still cared for me (which would imply that we used to be together).
I distinctly remember that I still longed for him, still wanted to be together with him. I felt happy when I was with him, but I didn't know how to tell him that.
Finally, I decided to bring him into the basement to have a personal chat with him. I remembered the part when I asked him to go with me and as we descended the metallic staircase into the basementwe couldn't keep our hands to ourselves and we ravished each other there and then ..... the dream ended.
Yeah, my dreams are usually squeaky clean ;P
For the first time, Nyk was in it.
We were all at this rich colleague's house. I have been to her actual house before, which is a double story house in a gated community. In my dream, the house grew another two floors below. Basically, it was a huge house, with nice furnishings and many butlers and maids.
The group of use were staying over a few nights to go for outings somewhere. This part is a bit vague.
What I do remember is that I was sharing a room with an attaching bathroom, with a couple. A gay one at that. I was coming out from the shower and they were in the room. They went into the shower together and when they emerged, asked me whether I could leave the room or not.
And so I left.
In the dream, I was dating this high school friend of mine, who is completely straight. Well, I did harbour a crush on him back then, but it was only a little. There were another person whom I liked more at the time.
Anyway, I was dating him, Lanky Larry. For a straight person, he was treating m very well (Nyk said: Duh! He's dating you.) He still had this very heterosexual character and personality about him.
I got the feeling that, he's as straight as they come, except for the fact that he's dating me. He was like trying to win me over, but I wasn't warming up to him.
Surprisingly, Lanky Larry wasn't staying together with us at the posh house.
And where does Nyk come into play?
Nyk was staying in another room. He was still treating me very nice, still cared for me (which would imply that we used to be together).
I distinctly remember that I still longed for him, still wanted to be together with him. I felt happy when I was with him, but I didn't know how to tell him that.
Finally, I decided to bring him into the basement to have a personal chat with him. I remembered the part when I asked him to go with me and as we descended the metallic staircase into the basement
Yeah, my dreams are usually squeaky clean ;P
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Infamous
Since I came back from China, I have watched four movies within the period of a week. Which comes up to one movie every other day.
First, there was Infamous, starring Tobey Jones as Truman Capote and Sandra Bullock as Lee Harper. It was an excellent film and as expected, it would be compared with Capote, the Oscar-nominated film last year.
I did not watch Capote, but from reviews online, Infamous is better. The latter is funnier and more light-hearted, and the gayness and flamboyance of Capote was more obvious.
Capote was always made fun of in the movie and mistaken as a women, which he took in his stride with witty comebacks.
Capote: May I speak to Mr Dewey please?
Secretary: I'm sorry, but Mr Dewey doesn't speak to strange women.
Capote: Who are you calling strange?
When Capote was visiting Perry Smith in prison, one of the prisoners shouted from his cell, "Come suck my cock." Capote replied, "Well I would love to, if you can get your thing through the bars."
If you are familiar with Capote, who wrote the famous book In Cold Blood, which was described as fictionalised non-fiction, he bonded and developed feelings for one of the murderers on death row, Perry Smith (played by Daniel Craig, the latest James Bond).
Capote and Smith actually shared an on-screen kiss, and it elicited an audible "Ughh!" from someone in the audience.
I was thinking, "That definitely has to be a straight guy."
Like, you don't see me going "Ughh!" when I see a straight couple kissing.
Anyway, it was a very good film and showed the gay side of Capote which was not explicitly shown in the earlier Capote movie. The director, Douglas McGrath says that his interpretation results from trying to understand why Capote's writing career faded after In Cold Blood. A principal source of material for the movie, contained an account in which someone pointed out that Capote bribed prison guards to stay away so that he and Smith could have sex.
I doubt this movie would be shown in Malaysia.
In short, it was fun, flamboyant and fabulous. Four stars out of five.
IMDB rating: 7.4 / 10
Rotten Tomatoes: 7 / 10
First, there was Infamous, starring Tobey Jones as Truman Capote and Sandra Bullock as Lee Harper. It was an excellent film and as expected, it would be compared with Capote, the Oscar-nominated film last year.
I did not watch Capote, but from reviews online, Infamous is better. The latter is funnier and more light-hearted, and the gayness and flamboyance of Capote was more obvious.
Capote was always made fun of in the movie and mistaken as a women, which he took in his stride with witty comebacks.
Capote: May I speak to Mr Dewey please?
Secretary: I'm sorry, but Mr Dewey doesn't speak to strange women.
Capote: Who are you calling strange?
When Capote was visiting Perry Smith in prison, one of the prisoners shouted from his cell, "Come suck my cock." Capote replied, "Well I would love to, if you can get your thing through the bars."
If you are familiar with Capote, who wrote the famous book In Cold Blood, which was described as fictionalised non-fiction, he bonded and developed feelings for one of the murderers on death row, Perry Smith (played by Daniel Craig, the latest James Bond).
Capote and Smith actually shared an on-screen kiss, and it elicited an audible "Ughh!" from someone in the audience.
I was thinking, "That definitely has to be a straight guy."
Like, you don't see me going "Ughh!" when I see a straight couple kissing.
Anyway, it was a very good film and showed the gay side of Capote which was not explicitly shown in the earlier Capote movie. The director, Douglas McGrath says that his interpretation results from trying to understand why Capote's writing career faded after In Cold Blood. A principal source of material for the movie, contained an account in which someone pointed out that Capote bribed prison guards to stay away so that he and Smith could have sex.
I doubt this movie would be shown in Malaysia.
In short, it was fun, flamboyant and fabulous. Four stars out of five.
IMDB rating: 7.4 / 10
Rotten Tomatoes: 7 / 10
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Snippets
Someone has been bugging me to update my blog, which admittedly has not been very up-to-date.
Let's see. To recap, from last month, some interesting things which happened.
On the first weekend of the Great Singapore Sale, I spent close to $500. That is like the single most expensive shopping day I have ever had! I know it may not be much to all those shopaholics out there, but it's like the highest ever, even in absolute amount and without conversion to Ringgit.
I bought a pair of shoes which cost $380, a shirt from Topman and a little something for Nyk from Bods Bodynits (I know, the gay brand).
What else happened?
Oh yeah, I thought that this would be the last time that I would be asked for my age. But evidently, it was not.
On my flight to Shanghai on Singapore Airlines, the stewardess asked my colleague and I whether we wanted wine. I said yes, white wine please and my colleague wanted red wine.
The flight attendant looked at me and asked, "Sir, may I know how old are you?"
I was like, too shocked to reply.
My colleague said, "Trust me, he's old enough." And I managed to answer "I am twentyone six."
She gave me a glass of wine and then said, "Sorry. Take that as a compliment then."
Erm, OK.
I wasn't actually ecstatic, but neither was I happy. I did try to look on the bright side and yeah, probablyshe couldn't see very well that means I still look young.
I haven't mentioned about the men in Shanghai, have I? Well, there weren't many cute ones which caught my eye. Out of the six days I was there, less than 10 I met on the streets which I consider cute.
Probably it's just me and my preference. For others, the whole street of Chinese men with rosy cheeks might be just up their alley.
I did see a young guy who was shirtless while I was sightseeing. His body was wonderful, tight abs and defined pecs.
My first thought was, "Wow, this is my first look of an actual Chinesemeat guy's body."
My second thought was, "Damn, where's my camera?"
As I was about to take a shot, he had walked past me and was quite a distance away. I couldn't possibly turn back and take a picture without coming out with a good excuse to my colleague. I don't think "Oh, I missed a piece of scenery back there. Give me a minute OK?" would work.
Just last Friday, I hinted heavily of my sexual orientation to my colleagues. Somehow, we were talking about manicures and pedicures amongst ourselves, three guys and a girl. One of the guys said that he wouldn't do a manicure, but he would consider a pedicure.
Let me state for a fact that the two of them are straight. As an arrow.
Hearing that, I was a little surprised. I mean, why be receptive to one and not the other?
I think he said something like, "Oh, pedicures they really remove those dead skin cells and it's good la. Can do once every few months."
I was like, "Why pay other people to do that? I scrub my feet every other day and I use moisturizer on them."
Hope that wasn't too much information, guys.
Anyway, my colleague replied, "Really? You are the only guy I know who does that. I mean, no one I know would do that. Really metrosexual. Why would you do that? Who looks at your feet?"
*rolls eyes*
"I like to have smooth feet can or not? I have a foot fetish."
Actually, I don't.
"Can, as long as you declare it."
Whatever.
Yeah, I have weird colleagues.
Let's see. To recap, from last month, some interesting things which happened.
On the first weekend of the Great Singapore Sale, I spent close to $500. That is like the single most expensive shopping day I have ever had! I know it may not be much to all those shopaholics out there, but it's like the highest ever, even in absolute amount and without conversion to Ringgit.
I bought a pair of shoes which cost $380, a shirt from Topman and a little something for Nyk from Bods Bodynits (I know, the gay brand).
What else happened?
Oh yeah, I thought that this would be the last time that I would be asked for my age. But evidently, it was not.
On my flight to Shanghai on Singapore Airlines, the stewardess asked my colleague and I whether we wanted wine. I said yes, white wine please and my colleague wanted red wine.
The flight attendant looked at me and asked, "Sir, may I know how old are you?"
I was like, too shocked to reply.
My colleague said, "Trust me, he's old enough." And I managed to answer "I am twenty
She gave me a glass of wine and then said, "Sorry. Take that as a compliment then."
Erm, OK.
I wasn't actually ecstatic, but neither was I happy. I did try to look on the bright side and yeah, probably
I haven't mentioned about the men in Shanghai, have I? Well, there weren't many cute ones which caught my eye. Out of the six days I was there, less than 10 I met on the streets which I consider cute.
Probably it's just me and my preference. For others, the whole street of Chinese men with rosy cheeks might be just up their alley.
I did see a young guy who was shirtless while I was sightseeing. His body was wonderful, tight abs and defined pecs.
My first thought was, "Wow, this is my first look of an actual Chinese
My second thought was, "Damn, where's my camera?"
As I was about to take a shot, he had walked past me and was quite a distance away. I couldn't possibly turn back and take a picture without coming out with a good excuse to my colleague. I don't think "Oh, I missed a piece of scenery back there. Give me a minute OK?" would work.
Just last Friday, I hinted heavily of my sexual orientation to my colleagues. Somehow, we were talking about manicures and pedicures amongst ourselves, three guys and a girl. One of the guys said that he wouldn't do a manicure, but he would consider a pedicure.
Let me state for a fact that the two of them are straight. As an arrow.
Hearing that, I was a little surprised. I mean, why be receptive to one and not the other?
I think he said something like, "Oh, pedicures they really remove those dead skin cells and it's good la. Can do once every few months."
I was like, "Why pay other people to do that? I scrub my feet every other day and I use moisturizer on them."
Hope that wasn't too much information, guys.
Anyway, my colleague replied, "Really? You are the only guy I know who does that. I mean, no one I know would do that. Really metrosexual. Why would you do that? Who looks at your feet?"
*rolls eyes*
"I like to have smooth feet can or not? I have a foot fetish."
Actually, I don't.
"Can, as long as you declare it."
Whatever.
Yeah, I have weird colleagues.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Filler post
Haven't been blogging this month and still haven't got the mood to blog yet.
This will be a short one. Was in China for a week, from 31st May till 6th June. Mostly I was in Hangzhou, a city described as
"Above is heaven, below is Hangzhou" goes a famous Chinese saying that pretty well describes the glamorous city of Hangzhou! With its amazing scenery and fascinating cultural attractions, Hangzhou is indeed heaven on earth!"
Actually, the saying includes Suzhou too. Suzhou has more man-made beauty while Hangzhou has more natural sceneries.
Hangzhou really is a city in a garden. The top tourist spot in China, which naturally made the whole city a giant tourist trap.
Will blog about my trip the next time.
Anyway, I shall leave you guys with a cute model ;P
Imagine you're a huge huge fan of Enrique Iglesias. And imagine him serenading his hit song "Hero" to you, like this:
Isn't that like, the coolest thing ever?
This will be a short one. Was in China for a week, from 31st May till 6th June. Mostly I was in Hangzhou, a city described as
"Above is heaven, below is Hangzhou" goes a famous Chinese saying that pretty well describes the glamorous city of Hangzhou! With its amazing scenery and fascinating cultural attractions, Hangzhou is indeed heaven on earth!"
Actually, the saying includes Suzhou too. Suzhou has more man-made beauty while Hangzhou has more natural sceneries.
Hangzhou really is a city in a garden. The top tourist spot in China, which naturally made the whole city a giant tourist trap.
Will blog about my trip the next time.
Anyway, I shall leave you guys with a cute model ;P
Imagine you're a huge huge fan of Enrique Iglesias. And imagine him serenading his hit song "Hero" to you, like this:
Isn't that like, the coolest thing ever?
Sunday, May 27, 2007
TGIQ II
Another thing which Rev White shared was how even though he struggled with his for those 30 years when he was married to his wife, he is still a Christian. Even though almost everyone in the church told him that homosexuality is wrong, he was also constantly reminded in his childhood that Jeses loves him. The power of love ultimately triumphs and made him realise that Jesus does love him, for who he is and just the way he is.
He knows that many gay Christians are still Christians because whatever bad experiences they have had with the religion, those experience have only made them stronger and better. It has given them the strength to be themselves and to help others who are struggling. Which was how the church he started grew from less than 100 to more than 10,000.
As he said, gays and lesbians have big spirits and bigger hearts.
In the audience that day, there was a good friend of his (erm, can't remember his name). Let's call him Jeff. Jeff had a similar experience of struggling with his sexuality and he too attempted suicide.
Currently, Jeff is dating a Cambodian, Kim. Jeff came from a strict Christian family and when his father died, he was disinherited from the will. He got nothing. Jeff said, "Well yeah, I lost a couple of million dollars, but what's a couple of million?" He smiled contentedly to Kim.
Yes, being true to yourself and standing up for your own happiness can be costly, in the tune of million dollars.
On the other hand, Kim's family has become Jeff's family. Coming from a Buddhist background which is more tolerant and understanding towards homosexuality, they accepted Jeff and Kim being together. They have been together for three and a half years.
There are military officials who are open-minded about this kind of things. This is not surprising especially those who have fought together with their comrades, straight or gay.
As Rev White said, without gays, there would be no army. If the church is really intent on kicking out priests and bishops who are gays, there won't be many of them left to serve the church ;P
Hell, a lot of things won't exist without us!
"Whenever I am invited to give a talk on homosexuality to university students, the first thing I ask is "Who masturbates?" No one raises their hand. Well, I would say, if none of you ever masturbated, you expect you guys can listen to and accept the topic of homosexuality?"
Sex is not a taboo thing. Only the Catholic church made it so. Abstinence. No contraception. Result: HIV prevalence and the Philippines, respectively.
There are lines in the Bible which encourage people to have sex when they have reach the proper ages.
So did Jesus masturbate? Was Jesus gay?
After all, he was surrounded by men most of the time.
He knows that many gay Christians are still Christians because whatever bad experiences they have had with the religion, those experience have only made them stronger and better. It has given them the strength to be themselves and to help others who are struggling. Which was how the church he started grew from less than 100 to more than 10,000.
As he said, gays and lesbians have big spirits and bigger hearts.
In the audience that day, there was a good friend of his (erm, can't remember his name). Let's call him Jeff. Jeff had a similar experience of struggling with his sexuality and he too attempted suicide.
Currently, Jeff is dating a Cambodian, Kim. Jeff came from a strict Christian family and when his father died, he was disinherited from the will. He got nothing. Jeff said, "Well yeah, I lost a couple of million dollars, but what's a couple of million?" He smiled contentedly to Kim.
Yes, being true to yourself and standing up for your own happiness can be costly, in the tune of million dollars.
On the other hand, Kim's family has become Jeff's family. Coming from a Buddhist background which is more tolerant and understanding towards homosexuality, they accepted Jeff and Kim being together. They have been together for three and a half years.
There are military officials who are open-minded about this kind of things. This is not surprising especially those who have fought together with their comrades, straight or gay.
As Rev White said, without gays, there would be no army. If the church is really intent on kicking out priests and bishops who are gays, there won't be many of them left to serve the church ;P
Hell, a lot of things won't exist without us!
"Whenever I am invited to give a talk on homosexuality to university students, the first thing I ask is "Who masturbates?" No one raises their hand. Well, I would say, if none of you ever masturbated, you expect you guys can listen to and accept the topic of homosexuality?"
Sex is not a taboo thing. Only the Catholic church made it so. Abstinence. No contraception. Result: HIV prevalence and the Philippines, respectively.
There are lines in the Bible which encourage people to have sex when they have reach the proper ages.
So did Jesus masturbate? Was Jesus gay?
After all, he was surrounded by men most of the time.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
TGIQ
Thank God I am Queer - A Gay Christian's Journey
When : 24 May 2007, Thursday, 7.30pm
Where : Free Community Church
The Rev. Dr. Mel White is a former ghostwriter for fellow evangelicals, including Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, and Jerry Falwell. Inspired by the nonviolence movements of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., White developed a program based on their principles to address the suffering of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. In 1997, he was awarded the ACLU’s National Civil Liberties Award for his efforts to apply the “soul force” principles of Gandhi and King to the struggle for justice for sexual minorities. He is the author of over 16 books, including Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America, published in 1994, and Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right, published in 2006.
Not only is he a celebrated writer, he's also a powerful advocate for being Christian and gay. And he speaks from a position of authority, having been the Dean of the Cathedral of Hope MCC in Dallas (the largest gay-lesbian church in the US) and Minister of Justice of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches. At the personal level, Mel White struggled with his sexuality for more than 30 years, before he finally accepted his sexual orientation as "a gift from God.
When : 24 May 2007, Thursday, 7.30pm
Where : Free Community Church
The Rev. Dr. Mel White is a former ghostwriter for fellow evangelicals, including Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, and Jerry Falwell. Inspired by the nonviolence movements of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., White developed a program based on their principles to address the suffering of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. In 1997, he was awarded the ACLU’s National Civil Liberties Award for his efforts to apply the “soul force” principles of Gandhi and King to the struggle for justice for sexual minorities. He is the author of over 16 books, including Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America, published in 1994, and Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right, published in 2006.
Not only is he a celebrated writer, he's also a powerful advocate for being Christian and gay. And he speaks from a position of authority, having been the Dean of the Cathedral of Hope MCC in Dallas (the largest gay-lesbian church in the US) and Minister of Justice of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches. At the personal level, Mel White struggled with his sexuality for more than 30 years, before he finally accepted his sexual orientation as "a gift from God.
The above was what attracted me to attend his sharing earlier today.
Rev Dr Mel White started off with how he lived with his wife for 30 years and one day tried to kill himself. Even though his wife is a wonderful woman, there was always this tension behind it. They had two kids; one who is Mike White who is now a millionaire (Hmmm, all those years of suffering. But thank God I now have a millionaire son!).
After the suicide attempt, the wife said to him, "Mel, I think you're gay. I want you to be happy, and I want me to be happy. You're not coming to terms with it and I am doing it for you."
The wife gave him a coin, one side which shows the Statue of Liberty (liberation to be who you are) and the other which has a pair of eagles with two eaglets. Even though he is gay, they're still a family (the four eagles) and they still love him.
He also shared his experience of how he tried to exorcise the demons within him, the demon of homosexuality. He went to the most famous church of exorcism and they can't help him. He went to see a psychiatrist and begged to be to be electrocuted, even though it was not recommended.
Every time he turned a card and there was a picture of a hot man behind it, he would be shocked with electricity. If it was a woman, there would be a mild shock. In the end, he had a crush on the cute guy who administered the shocks! ;P
Basically, homosexuality is not something that can be erased, eradicated or exorcised. It is a desire and a longing to be with another man, to come home and be greeted by a man, to wake up beside a man everyday, to hold another man's hands and walk on the beach. Homosexuality is an orientation and it's not just all about sex.
And the Biblical authors surely did not understand the concept of sexual orientation in that era, as even many do not today.
He has so much energy and passion, even though he is 67 years old. His message is of love and acceptance of oneself. God created each and everyone of us. All of are loved by Him and has a purpose and no one should tell you otherwise. God loves all of His creations.
A lot of things he said is very logical. It doesn't make sense for the Being that created you to hate you.
And the Bible has been misused many times to support all sorts of atrocities - the Inquisition, Crusades, child labour, slavery, keeping woman inferior and "in their place", etc.
He said he loves the bumper stinker which says "Jesus is coming back and he is pissed", as the church has been fuelling bigotry and killing young gays and lesbians silently. Jesus came to spread love to everybody; he embraced and included especially the marginalised and outcasts; he served the people. The church is now doing the exact opposite.
Rev White said he knows of a famous dance photographer who donated $10,000 to his church and then killed himself because "he has been rejected by his family, friends and church".
Another 16 year old killed himself in front of the mortuary and lied on a piece of plastic so as not to give much hassle to those who would take the body away. He was valedictorian for his year.
All in all, Rev White personally knew of 23 persons who took their own lives in the last 12 years.
In addition, Rev White believes in "freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from religious and political oppression through the practice of relentless nonviolent resistance", as written from the Soulforce website. This was inspired by people like Martin King Jr and Gandhi.
Something that he did was to attend Jerry Falwell's church and everytime they say something bad about homosexuality, they will stand up in church and protest. He said to Jerry, "We will win your hearts and minds, but unfortunately he died."
As can be read from the article in Wikipedia, Rev Dr Mel White has been together with his partner Gary Nixon for 23 years.
After his sharing, he was asked a few questions. One of them was about sexual ethics.
Rev White shared with the floor about the time he was caught cheating. Gary asked him "Did you have sex with him?" and he said no. Gary then called him you lying sack of shit.
Later when they talked about it, Gary said that it was not the cheating part that hurt, but it was the lying. It starts with one lie and who knows where it would end? That thought was scarier and more hurtful than the infidelity. The foundation of trust and honest communication has been broken and a meaningful relationship cannot be built based on that.
The point being that there is no fixed sexual ethics. Monogamy, polygamy, menage-a-trois, open relationship - all these have to be based on honesty, trust, integrity and love.
Jesus mentioned something about using people as sex objects. Buddhism mentions something similar about sexual misconduct, defined as that which brings harm to oneself, to others or to both oneself and others.
If one were to "bounce, bounce, bounce and bounce from one bed to another, it could become an addiction or sickness". One night of sex based on a meaningful relationship and love is worth more than a hundred random sexual encounters.
It has been a really enjoyable evening for me. The message that being gay as a gift from God was mentioned many many times. That God created you and loves you just the way you are. The sooner one accepts that the better.
There was so much positivity in his sharing. It is seldom that I come across this, as the usual case would be more of criticism and condemnation of gays, gay lifestyle, sinful and hedonistic endeavours in the media and political speeches.
I am not a fan of religion, especially Christianity. All the violence, discrimination and killings justified by religion really gets to me. I know the religion itself is all about love, but I find it difficult to separate that from the Church.
Jesus himself was a great person, with lots of wisdom, compassion and love. If I were to look at those positives and ignore all those destroying of whole villages, killings of the young and innocent, raping of woman, I suppose it isn't such a bad religion after all ;P
P/S His long term relationship of more than 20 years does show that it is possible for gay relationships to work and it's not all doom and gloom. I really want something like that with Nyk ;P
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
The HIV scourge
The issue of homosexuality is in the media again, thanks to Lee Kuan Yew's statement a last month where he said, "If in fact it is true, and I have asked doctors this, that you are genetically born a homosexual because that's the nature of the genetic random transmission of genes, you can't help it. So why should we criminalise it?"
Actually, the issue has been in the limelight since the review of the Singapore Penal Code, where the law now allows heterosexuals to have anal and oral sex, but that it is still a crime for two males to do so.
It is not a crime to be gay, but it is a crime if one indulges in anal sex.
It doesn't make sense, I know, but this is Singapore. Even though it has been said many times that the law is in not going to be actively enforced (which begs the question why is it retained?), it is there to appease the conservatives and the religious right.
But what makes it dangerous and in fact costing lives, just to appease these people are the obstacles involve in HIV and AIDS prevention for MSM (men who have sex with men).
At the AIDS Memorial on Sunday, the 34th edition of The Act, a publication by AfA (Action for AIDS) was given to all attendants. You can download it here.
There was a section on consequences of Sections 377 and 377A of the Penal Code on HIV prevention. The below is an extract, which I am deeply concerned about:
4 Inability to address the needs of young MSM
It has been very difficult to reach out to young MSM who are contemplating or already having sex. Young MSM are especially at risk of STI including HIV infection because they are less able to access sources of information and advice about safer sexual
practices for the following reasons –
a) School-based programs do not have information and materials that discuss homosexuality in an impartial and unbiased manner, including emotions, identity, sexual practices, safer sex techniques and negotiation skills
b) Young MSM may fear seeking professional advice (e.g. from doctors, teachers, youth workers) because to do so would be to admit having committed a crime;
c) Support groups and youth organizations for young MSM are practically non-existent; if they do exist they tend to keep a low profile to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Many young MSM will not know of sources of support and peer education;
d) MSM venues and clubs operate under clear age-restricted rules to comply with licensing laws. Young MSM are thus not exposed to AIDS education messages and campaigns; young MSM are also less likely to be able to afford the cover charges levied at these clubs and venues. They are also less exposed to the social climate within the organized gay community, which strongly supports "safer sex";
e) Young MSM may feel isolated and marginalized and regarded as not part of the broader society due to the criminalisation of their sexuality.
An application for funding of a program that included a component catering to young MSM was rejected because the government agency either did not think it was important or deemed that it was too sensitive a topic to address.
5 Censorship of MSM educational materials and events
Action for AIDS has on several occasions been asked to stop distributing materials containing information on homosexuality even though these materials were meant specifically for MSM venues and events. The reasons repeatedly given by the authorities was that because homosexual sex is illegal, it cannot be mentioned; therefore providing information on safe sex relevant to MSM is also illegal.
Because of the law, some young people are HIV positive because the relevant information and sexual education doesn't reach them. When something is thought of as bad, crime or sin, how does one expect it to be discussed and brought into the open?
It is a fact that young people, especially high school students are having sex with strangers from MIRC and personals websites. And this reality is borne by the testimonies of young MSMs in the publication.
Extracts (prints in bold are my own):
"It is hard to place a timeline on when I discover or realize I was a gay. Given that I had an interest in guys when I was 12 or 13 years old. My first sexual encounter started when I was like 15 years or so, when I got to know the MIRC, Internet chat rooms where I find out there is a gay channel and sgboy channel inside. Through there, I met my first sexual encounter and I had my first anal sex without protection...
From then on, I met guys out for fun and sex until I had a 6 – 7 months of so-called relationship with this guy purely based on sex, which has a term of buddy sex. During the ending period of this relationship, I fell sick a lot of times while he has some nose issue with himself and the doctor but we still continued having sex sometimes. Although we met up regularly, we still do meet other guys up for fun. But in this buddy sex thing, there was not any protection used and most of the time he would ejaculate inside me. But when I had fun outside, the guys would use condoms.
It was when I was 17 years plus, I had a month of prolonged illness of flu, cough and sore throat. I remember it was in near December, Christmas seasons. I started getting sick, and after each recovery I would get sick again. Every visit to the neighborhood
clinic made me spend more and more as each time the doctor would prescribe a stronger antibiotic for me. The last visit during that period cost about $90/-...
I do believe that, no matter what, I cannot let my parents find out about this. Each passing day, I would just live my life just as normally I have been doing, but sometimes thoughts that I am going to need medication brings confusion into my head. I did not really have a way of dealing with having HIV. But having thoughts about it running through my head here and there is kind of stressful. My family isn't really financially well off as one of my parents is retrenched. All I had in my mind is to soften my mother's burden and not letting her worrying over my condition...
I do believe that education to the young is the only way in helping us and the society in learning more about HIV, safe sex etc. No matter how young a person is we are exposed to the world in various ways which can influence us in some way. Educating the young in safe sex should be included with the various symptoms of all the sexually transmitted diseases like HIV." - Chinese 19 years, diagnosed at 18
Another one:
I knew I was gay when I was in secondary school. It was also during that time that I had my first sexual encounter. However I did not tell my friends in school about it. The first time I told a friend about my sexuality was when I was in junior college...
I believed I contracted HIV when I had unprotected sex with someone I knew over the Internet while I was serving the army. I had underestimated the importance of safer sex. I did not think I would be unlucky as to contract HIV. I had sexual encounters too early and the importance of safer sex did not hit me as being crucial. To me, it was more of a form of contraception than a protection against STIs at that time. HIV and other STIs were simply diseases which I thought were gory pictures showing infected genitals...
I am convinced that a better awareness of safer sex and the various STIs can protect individuals. They should be empowered with the necessary information in order to make an informed decision. I wished I knew the dangers of having unprotected sex as well as knowing how I could have protected myself. By casting sex as the forbidden fruit, it made me curious, and I am sure many others feel the same. Being open and honest about sex could be one way forward... - Chinese 23 years, diagnosed at 20
Even though the message for safe sex seems pretty common for me, it is quite obvious that it is quite uncommon for a lot of young people. The best way would be to reach them in school, through some campaign or awareness program.
But then, how relevant and how effective can it be, when even straight sex are still somewhat spoken in hush tones, what more homosexual acts. As you can read from the above, words like "homosexual" and "gay" can't even appear in print in reading materials for distribution.
There are many who doesn't have access to the internet, printed materials, etc. Even if they do, the importance of safe sex have to be emphasized and reinforced over and over to make sure they get. Especially for teenagers, where it is the phase of experimentation and rebellion, things like this might just whizzed past them. Seem like trivial. Like what are the chances?
If only humans are like the HIV virus - non-discriminatory. It does not care about one's race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, wealth, social status, whatever. It does not care who it infects.
And that is what makes it so dangerous and lethal.
Actually, the issue has been in the limelight since the review of the Singapore Penal Code, where the law now allows heterosexuals to have anal and oral sex, but that it is still a crime for two males to do so.
It is not a crime to be gay, but it is a crime if one indulges in anal sex.
It doesn't make sense, I know, but this is Singapore. Even though it has been said many times that the law is in not going to be actively enforced (which begs the question why is it retained?), it is there to appease the conservatives and the religious right.
But what makes it dangerous and in fact costing lives, just to appease these people are the obstacles involve in HIV and AIDS prevention for MSM (men who have sex with men).
At the AIDS Memorial on Sunday, the 34th edition of The Act, a publication by AfA (Action for AIDS) was given to all attendants. You can download it here.
There was a section on consequences of Sections 377 and 377A of the Penal Code on HIV prevention. The below is an extract, which I am deeply concerned about:
4 Inability to address the needs of young MSM
It has been very difficult to reach out to young MSM who are contemplating or already having sex. Young MSM are especially at risk of STI including HIV infection because they are less able to access sources of information and advice about safer sexual
practices for the following reasons –
a) School-based programs do not have information and materials that discuss homosexuality in an impartial and unbiased manner, including emotions, identity, sexual practices, safer sex techniques and negotiation skills
b) Young MSM may fear seeking professional advice (e.g. from doctors, teachers, youth workers) because to do so would be to admit having committed a crime;
c) Support groups and youth organizations for young MSM are practically non-existent; if they do exist they tend to keep a low profile to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Many young MSM will not know of sources of support and peer education;
d) MSM venues and clubs operate under clear age-restricted rules to comply with licensing laws. Young MSM are thus not exposed to AIDS education messages and campaigns; young MSM are also less likely to be able to afford the cover charges levied at these clubs and venues. They are also less exposed to the social climate within the organized gay community, which strongly supports "safer sex";
e) Young MSM may feel isolated and marginalized and regarded as not part of the broader society due to the criminalisation of their sexuality.
An application for funding of a program that included a component catering to young MSM was rejected because the government agency either did not think it was important or deemed that it was too sensitive a topic to address.
5 Censorship of MSM educational materials and events
Action for AIDS has on several occasions been asked to stop distributing materials containing information on homosexuality even though these materials were meant specifically for MSM venues and events. The reasons repeatedly given by the authorities was that because homosexual sex is illegal, it cannot be mentioned; therefore providing information on safe sex relevant to MSM is also illegal.
Because of the law, some young people are HIV positive because the relevant information and sexual education doesn't reach them. When something is thought of as bad, crime or sin, how does one expect it to be discussed and brought into the open?
It is a fact that young people, especially high school students are having sex with strangers from MIRC and personals websites. And this reality is borne by the testimonies of young MSMs in the publication.
Extracts (prints in bold are my own):
"It is hard to place a timeline on when I discover or realize I was a gay. Given that I had an interest in guys when I was 12 or 13 years old. My first sexual encounter started when I was like 15 years or so, when I got to know the MIRC, Internet chat rooms where I find out there is a gay channel and sgboy channel inside. Through there, I met my first sexual encounter and I had my first anal sex without protection...
From then on, I met guys out for fun and sex until I had a 6 – 7 months of so-called relationship with this guy purely based on sex, which has a term of buddy sex. During the ending period of this relationship, I fell sick a lot of times while he has some nose issue with himself and the doctor but we still continued having sex sometimes. Although we met up regularly, we still do meet other guys up for fun. But in this buddy sex thing, there was not any protection used and most of the time he would ejaculate inside me. But when I had fun outside, the guys would use condoms.
It was when I was 17 years plus, I had a month of prolonged illness of flu, cough and sore throat. I remember it was in near December, Christmas seasons. I started getting sick, and after each recovery I would get sick again. Every visit to the neighborhood
clinic made me spend more and more as each time the doctor would prescribe a stronger antibiotic for me. The last visit during that period cost about $90/-...
I do believe that, no matter what, I cannot let my parents find out about this. Each passing day, I would just live my life just as normally I have been doing, but sometimes thoughts that I am going to need medication brings confusion into my head. I did not really have a way of dealing with having HIV. But having thoughts about it running through my head here and there is kind of stressful. My family isn't really financially well off as one of my parents is retrenched. All I had in my mind is to soften my mother's burden and not letting her worrying over my condition...
I do believe that education to the young is the only way in helping us and the society in learning more about HIV, safe sex etc. No matter how young a person is we are exposed to the world in various ways which can influence us in some way. Educating the young in safe sex should be included with the various symptoms of all the sexually transmitted diseases like HIV." - Chinese 19 years, diagnosed at 18
Another one:
I knew I was gay when I was in secondary school. It was also during that time that I had my first sexual encounter. However I did not tell my friends in school about it. The first time I told a friend about my sexuality was when I was in junior college...
I believed I contracted HIV when I had unprotected sex with someone I knew over the Internet while I was serving the army. I had underestimated the importance of safer sex. I did not think I would be unlucky as to contract HIV. I had sexual encounters too early and the importance of safer sex did not hit me as being crucial. To me, it was more of a form of contraception than a protection against STIs at that time. HIV and other STIs were simply diseases which I thought were gory pictures showing infected genitals...
I am convinced that a better awareness of safer sex and the various STIs can protect individuals. They should be empowered with the necessary information in order to make an informed decision. I wished I knew the dangers of having unprotected sex as well as knowing how I could have protected myself. By casting sex as the forbidden fruit, it made me curious, and I am sure many others feel the same. Being open and honest about sex could be one way forward... - Chinese 23 years, diagnosed at 20
Even though the message for safe sex seems pretty common for me, it is quite obvious that it is quite uncommon for a lot of young people. The best way would be to reach them in school, through some campaign or awareness program.
But then, how relevant and how effective can it be, when even straight sex are still somewhat spoken in hush tones, what more homosexual acts. As you can read from the above, words like "homosexual" and "gay" can't even appear in print in reading materials for distribution.
There are many who doesn't have access to the internet, printed materials, etc. Even if they do, the importance of safe sex have to be emphasized and reinforced over and over to make sure they get. Especially for teenagers, where it is the phase of experimentation and rebellion, things like this might just whizzed past them. Seem like trivial. Like what are the chances?
If only humans are like the HIV virus - non-discriminatory. It does not care about one's race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, wealth, social status, whatever. It does not care who it infects.
And that is what makes it so dangerous and lethal.
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