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Gay culture has become a nightmare of consumerism, whether it's an endless quest for Absolut vodka, Diesel jeans, rainbow Hummers, pec implants, or Pottery Barn. Whatever happened to sexual flamboyance and gender liberation, an end to marriage, the military, and the nuclear family? As backrooms are shut down to make way for wedding vows, and gay sexual culture morphs into “straight-acting dudes hangin’ out,” what are the possibilities for a defiant faggotry that challenges the assimilationist norms of a corporate-cozy lifestyle?
Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? challenges not just the violence of straight homophobia but the hypocrisy of mainstream gay norms that say the only way to stay safe is to act straight: get married, join the military, adopt kids! Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore reinvokes the anger, flamboyance, and subversion once thriving in gay subcultures in order to create something dangerous and lovely: an exploration of the perils of assimilation; a call for accountability; a vision for change. A sassy and splintering emergency intervention!
Called "startlingly bold and provocative" by Howard Zinn, and described as "a cross between Tinkerbell and a honky Malcolm X with a queer agenda" by The Austin Chronicle, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is undoubtedly one of America's most outspoken queer critics. She is the author of two novels, including, most recently, So Many Ways to Sleep Badly, and is the editor of four nonfiction anthologies, including Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity and That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation.
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Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore: Called "startlingly bold and provocative" by Howard Zinn, described as "a cross between Tinkerbell and a honky Malcolm X with a queer agenda" by the Austin Chronicle, and named one of Utne Reader's "Visionaries" in 2008, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is undoubtedly one of America's most outrageous queer critics. She is the author of two novels, including, most recently, So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights 2008), and the editor of four nonfiction anthologies, including Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Seal 2007) and That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (Soft Skull 2004; expanded second edition 2008). Her writing appears regularly in a variety of publications, including the San Francisco Bay Guardian, AlterNet, Bitch, Utne Reader, Bookslut, Lambda Book Report, The Gay and Lesbian Review, and The Stranger. She is the reviews editor at the feminist magazine Make/shift, and has penned a monthly column in Maximumrocknroll for five years. She's gone on five extensive cross-country book tours, and guest-lectured at numerous universities, from Yale to Evergreen, UCLA to McGill.
Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? Table of Contents
Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots: An Introduction, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Essays
1. Fierce.net: Imagining a Faggotty Web, D. Travers Scott
2. Going from Zero to Sexy on High-Caloric Queer Overdrive, CAConrad
3. Trans/Nationally Femme: Notes on Neoliberal Economic Regimes, Security States and My Life as a Brown Immigrant Fag, Debanuj DasGupta
4. Levity and Gravity, Chris Bartlett
5. Death by Masculinity, Ali Abbas
6. Fucking with Fucking Online: Advocating for Indiscriminate Promiscuity, Michael J. Faris & ML Sugie
7. Penis is Important for That, Nick Clarkson
8. Glass Blowing, Khary Polk
9. Appearances and all That, Tommi Avicolli Mecca
10. Girls, Gina de Vries
11. Straightening the Shawl, Ezra RedEagle Whitman
12. The Unlikely Barebacker, Shepperton Jones
13. Rehab for the Unrepentant, Francisco Ibáñez-Carrasco
14. I’ll Tell You What I Want, What I Really Really Want: Homolove and Accountability, Harris Kornstein
15. The Soul of Our Work, George Ayala and Patrick “Pato” Hebert
16. Dirt Story, Lewis Wallace
17. Prisons and Closets, Jason Lydon
18. A Rock and a Bird, Booh Edouardo
19. Slow Boil: AIDS and the Remnants of Time, Eric a. Stanley
20. Excelsior, Jaime Cortez
21. My Fear, The Forces Beneath, Willow Aerin Fagan
22. Cell Block 6, Carrie Burrows
23. Not Till the Earth Falls into the Sun, Horehound Stillpoint
24. Dancing with White Boys, James Villanueva
25. Something Resembling Power, August Nightingale
Contributor Bios