Rocky Horror Picture Show
Grease
Pirates of the Caribbean
Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest
Boondock Saints
Fight Club
Starsky and Hutch
Neverending Story
Blazing Saddles
Airplane!
Total: 7
The Princess Bride
Anchorman
Napoleon Dynamite
Labyrinth
Saw
Saw II
White Noise
White Oleander
Anger Management
50 First Dates
The Princess Diaries
The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
Total so far: 9
Scream
Scream 2
Scream 3
Scary Movie
Scary Movie 2
Scary Movie 3
Scary Movie 4
American Pie
American Pie 2
American Wedding
American Pie Band Camp
Total so far: 14
Harry Potter 1
Harry Potter 2
Harry Potter 3
Harry Potter 4
Resident Evil 1
Resident Evil 2
The Wedding Singer
Little Black Book
The Village
Lilo & Stitch
Total so far: 15
Finding Nemo
Finding Neverland
Signs
The Grinch
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
White Chicks
Butterfly Effect
13 Going on 30
I, Robot
Robots
Total so far: 17
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Universal Soldier
Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
Along Came Polly
Deep Impact
KingPin
Never Been Kissed
Meet The Parents
Meet the Fockers
Eight Crazy Nights
Joe Dirt
KING KONG
Total so far: 18
A Cinderella Story
The Terminal
The Lizzie McGuire Movie
Passport to Paris
Dumb & Dumber
Dumber & Dumberer
Final Destination
Final Destination 2
Halloween
The Ring
The Ring 2
Surviving X-MAS
Flubber
Total so far: 19
Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
Practical Magic
Chicago
Ghost Ship
From Hell
Hellboy
Secret Window
I Am Sam
The Whole Nine Yards
The Whole Ten Yards
Total so far: 21
The Day After Tomorrow
Child's Play
Seed of Chucky
Bride of Chucky
Ten Things I Hate About You
Just Married
Gothika
Nightmare on Elm Street
Sixteen Candles
Remember the Titans
Coach Carter
The Grudge
The Grudge 2
The Mask
Son Of The Mask
Total so far: 26
Bad Boys
Bad Boys 2
Joy Ride
Lucky Number Slevin
Ocean's Eleven
Ocean's Twelve
Bourne Identity
Bourne Supremecy
Lone Star
Bedazzled
Predator I
Predator II
The Fog
Ice Age
Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
Curious George
Total so far: 29
Independence Day
Cujo
A Bronx Tale
Darkness Falls
Christine
ET
Children of the Corn
My Bosses Daughter
Maid in Manhattan
War of the Worlds
Rush Hour
Rush Hour 2
Total so far: 32
Best Bet
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
She's All That
Calendar Girls
Sideways
Mars Attacks
Event Horizon
Ever After
Wizard of Oz
Forrest Gump
Big Trouble in Little China
The Terminator
The Terminator 2
The Terminator 3
Total so far: 39
X-Men
X-2
X-3
Spider-Man
Spider-Man 2
Sky High
Jeepers Creepers
Jeepers Creepers 2
Catch Me If You Can
The Little Mermaid
Freaky Friday
Reign of Fire
The Skulls
Cruel Intentions
Cruel Intentions 2
The Hot Chick
Shrek
Shrek 2
Total so far: 42
Swimfan
Miracle on 34th street
Old School
The Notebook
K-Pax
Krippendorf's Tribe
A Walk to Remember
Ice Castles
Boogeyman
The 40-year-old Virgin
Total so far: 44
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Lord of the Rings: Return Of the King
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Total so far: 50
Baseketball
Hostel
Waiting for Guffman
House of 1000 Corpses
Devils Rejects
Elf
Highlander
Mothman Prophecies
American History X
Three
Total so Far: 53
The Jacket
Kung Fu Hustle
Shaolin Soccer
Night Watch
Monsters Inc.
Titanic
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Shaun Of the Dead
Willard
Total so far: 57
High Tension
Club Dread
Hulk
Dawn Of the Dead
Hook
Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
28 days later
Orgazmo
Phantasm
Waterworld
Total so far: 61
Kill Bill vol 1
Kill Bill vol 2
Mortal Kombat
Wolf Creek
Kingdom of Heaven
The Hills Have Eyes
I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman
The Last House on the Left
Re-Animator
Army of Darkness
Total so far: 68
Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace
Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones
Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith
Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope
Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi
Ewoks Caravan Of Courage
Ewoks The Battle For Endor
Total so far: 74
The Matrix
The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix Revolutions
Animatrix
Evil Dead
Evil Dead 2
Team America: World Police
Red Dragon
Silence of the Lambs
Hannibal
TOTAL: 82 / 239
This is a pretty good indicator of what types of movies I'll even sit down and watch. Unless it has zombies / nazis / aliens / robots / gangsters / swordfights / motorcycles uzi battles / severed ears I probably don't care.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Being A Man: Author Deconstructs "Stigma of Effeminacy"
The following is a reprint from Just Out , a weekly queer newspaper serving the Greater Portland Area.
It might be hyperbole to say Jack Malebranche has written the manifesto queer men have been waiting for, but manifestos invite overstatement and require little justification. Rather than argue a position, they claim ideological turf.
The author of Androphilia: Rejecting the Gay Identity, Reclaiming Masculinity explicitly states, “I didn’t write this book for gays.” Rather, his target audience is “men who love men but who are sick to death of the gay community.” Gay culture, Malebranche claims, has less to do with sexual preference than it does subculture, slang and stereotypes. Far from being a harmless diversion, the gay subculture imposes a false separation between heterosexual and homosexual men. This sexual apartheid not only negatively affects homosexuals, but also heterosexuals who acquire homophobic ideas in reaction to what Malebranche considers a small, vocal minority of “queenie” gay men grabbing all the attention.
In a scant 120 pages, Malebranche savagely deconstructs the gay community from the intimate perspective that only an insider can offer. A former New York City club kid and go-go dancer who did time in post-Stonewall Greenwich Village, he is no stranger to gay culture.
Androphilia does not argue for reforming the gay community. Instead, Malebranche argues for secession, seeking to create a loose fraternity of men who love men, free from the constraints of recent history. Its proclamation that “Gay is dead” might be premature, but Androphilia certainly represents another nail in the coffin. While Malebranche grants that the gay rights movement was “a successful tool in liberating same-sex-inclined persons from very real oppression,” he posits a clear vision of how the gay rights movement degenerated. Organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation inflame fear and paranoia while presenting an inaccurate and (above all) neutered version of homosexuality. “Having brought an end to police harassment and widespread discrimination, the gay rights movement has turned to nitpicking” and maintains “the illusion of oppression and victimization so that hundreds of thousands of checkbook revolutionaries can believe that they are fighting for their own freedom.”
Same-sex marriage, according to Malebranche, represents the ultimate in nitpicking. He uses the 500-pound gorilla of perennial gay infidelity as evidence for the absurdity of such a campaign. “I’ve spoken to many gays who, while angry about the fact that they can’t get married, have never really even had a successful long-term relationship,” he writes, championing the libertarian solution of “moderate domestic partnership and civil union laws that would be more flexible and more satisfactory for a broader range of people.”
However, he’s clearly interested in more than just thumbing his nose at gay liberals. “The stigma of effeminacy” forced Malebranche’s pen to paper. He begins his discussion of the stigma with Bishop Alexander of Diospolis, who was castrated and forced to walk the streets as a stark warning to homosexuals (and, apparently, an offering to Yahweh). While attempting to explain ancient and medieval stigmas against effeminacy—somewhat spuriously, as in antiquity “effeminate” referred, ipso facto, to weakness and a shirking of male responsibility—he also reminds the reader of history’s diverse homosexualities, paying special (if not obsessive) attention to the role of same-sex-attracted men in martial contexts both East and West.
While admitting a selective presentation of ancient history, his recent history is far less so. Malebranche crafts a brief history of the gay rights movement and its genesis in the “born gay” theories of German Enlightenment figures Ludwig Casper and Karl Heinreich Ulrichs. Their legacy in the gay rights movement “made a Faustian bargain…trading away the masculinity of all homosexual men.”
But what’s the alternative? Malebranche maintains: “There’s something to this ‘being a man’ business. It’s not just some completely constructed social identity.” His choice of words is important. He does not posit a hormonal overdeterminism to combat cultural overdeterminism. For Malebranche, masculinity represents a nuanced interplay among physical masculinity, essential masculinity and cultural masculinity. Men necessarily inhabit a specific phenomenological reality.
Malebranche further claims (without reference to either the hard or soft sciences) that physical masculinity causes men “to be more naturally aggressive or assertive.” Still, it’s hard to argue with his contention that “being manly essentially means being different from the majority of women.”
Cultural masculinity seems most problematic, though his most succinct statement of what cultural masculinity entails (“What a man will and won’t do is more often than not related to what he personally believes a man should or should not do”) is hard to dispute. While acknowledging masculinity “can be problematic,” he also claims, “It’s not a problem, it’s a solution.”
Ultimately, Malebranche argues for adult values within the gay community. Not mere philosophical abstraction, he outlines specific behaviors that express masculinist values. His values can be attacked as semi-arbitrary constructions. However, it seems harder to attack the substance of his argument. Responsibility, for Malebranche, means merely accepting responsibility for one’s actions. Achievement is the antidote to widespread superficiality that esteems appearance over action. Respect means treating other adult men—regardless of sexual identification—as brothers. Finally, masculine honor has nothing to do with blood feuding and grudges. Rather, homosexual men would do well to keep their mouths shut about who their sexual partners are and what goes on between them. After outlining the values of his nascent movement, Malebranche offers suggestions for reclaiming masculinity.
Androphilia is not without problems. Malebranche has a tendency to universalize his own experiences. He claims political neutrality, but a cursory glance at his influences betray this—as is often the case—as a code word for conservatism. His obsessive emphasis on martial homosexuality similarly belies an essentially conservative and traditionalist worldview. Further, his critique of homosexuals affiliated with the Democratic Party seems bizarre considering it is the only major party not using homophobic bigotry to win votes. Perhaps Malebranche’s shrewdest observation is that it is patently fallacious to suggest that all homosexual men can or should organize under one banner and that all who fall without are self-loathers, equivalent to Jewish Nazis.
Androphilia is relevant and timely, tapping into the same energy as Brokeback Mountain, That’s Revolting and the novels of Chuck Palahniuk. It is also a pleasure to read, as Malebranche writes with an easy, relaxed style that is informal but never amateur. I have no doubt that Androphilia will soon be required reading for young homosexual men looking for an alternative to disco balls, rainbow flags and celebrity gossip.
It might be hyperbole to say Jack Malebranche has written the manifesto queer men have been waiting for, but manifestos invite overstatement and require little justification. Rather than argue a position, they claim ideological turf.
The author of Androphilia: Rejecting the Gay Identity, Reclaiming Masculinity explicitly states, “I didn’t write this book for gays.” Rather, his target audience is “men who love men but who are sick to death of the gay community.” Gay culture, Malebranche claims, has less to do with sexual preference than it does subculture, slang and stereotypes. Far from being a harmless diversion, the gay subculture imposes a false separation between heterosexual and homosexual men. This sexual apartheid not only negatively affects homosexuals, but also heterosexuals who acquire homophobic ideas in reaction to what Malebranche considers a small, vocal minority of “queenie” gay men grabbing all the attention.
In a scant 120 pages, Malebranche savagely deconstructs the gay community from the intimate perspective that only an insider can offer. A former New York City club kid and go-go dancer who did time in post-Stonewall Greenwich Village, he is no stranger to gay culture.
Androphilia does not argue for reforming the gay community. Instead, Malebranche argues for secession, seeking to create a loose fraternity of men who love men, free from the constraints of recent history. Its proclamation that “Gay is dead” might be premature, but Androphilia certainly represents another nail in the coffin. While Malebranche grants that the gay rights movement was “a successful tool in liberating same-sex-inclined persons from very real oppression,” he posits a clear vision of how the gay rights movement degenerated. Organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation inflame fear and paranoia while presenting an inaccurate and (above all) neutered version of homosexuality. “Having brought an end to police harassment and widespread discrimination, the gay rights movement has turned to nitpicking” and maintains “the illusion of oppression and victimization so that hundreds of thousands of checkbook revolutionaries can believe that they are fighting for their own freedom.”
Same-sex marriage, according to Malebranche, represents the ultimate in nitpicking. He uses the 500-pound gorilla of perennial gay infidelity as evidence for the absurdity of such a campaign. “I’ve spoken to many gays who, while angry about the fact that they can’t get married, have never really even had a successful long-term relationship,” he writes, championing the libertarian solution of “moderate domestic partnership and civil union laws that would be more flexible and more satisfactory for a broader range of people.”
However, he’s clearly interested in more than just thumbing his nose at gay liberals. “The stigma of effeminacy” forced Malebranche’s pen to paper. He begins his discussion of the stigma with Bishop Alexander of Diospolis, who was castrated and forced to walk the streets as a stark warning to homosexuals (and, apparently, an offering to Yahweh). While attempting to explain ancient and medieval stigmas against effeminacy—somewhat spuriously, as in antiquity “effeminate” referred, ipso facto, to weakness and a shirking of male responsibility—he also reminds the reader of history’s diverse homosexualities, paying special (if not obsessive) attention to the role of same-sex-attracted men in martial contexts both East and West.
While admitting a selective presentation of ancient history, his recent history is far less so. Malebranche crafts a brief history of the gay rights movement and its genesis in the “born gay” theories of German Enlightenment figures Ludwig Casper and Karl Heinreich Ulrichs. Their legacy in the gay rights movement “made a Faustian bargain…trading away the masculinity of all homosexual men.”
But what’s the alternative? Malebranche maintains: “There’s something to this ‘being a man’ business. It’s not just some completely constructed social identity.” His choice of words is important. He does not posit a hormonal overdeterminism to combat cultural overdeterminism. For Malebranche, masculinity represents a nuanced interplay among physical masculinity, essential masculinity and cultural masculinity. Men necessarily inhabit a specific phenomenological reality.
Malebranche further claims (without reference to either the hard or soft sciences) that physical masculinity causes men “to be more naturally aggressive or assertive.” Still, it’s hard to argue with his contention that “being manly essentially means being different from the majority of women.”
Cultural masculinity seems most problematic, though his most succinct statement of what cultural masculinity entails (“What a man will and won’t do is more often than not related to what he personally believes a man should or should not do”) is hard to dispute. While acknowledging masculinity “can be problematic,” he also claims, “It’s not a problem, it’s a solution.”
Ultimately, Malebranche argues for adult values within the gay community. Not mere philosophical abstraction, he outlines specific behaviors that express masculinist values. His values can be attacked as semi-arbitrary constructions. However, it seems harder to attack the substance of his argument. Responsibility, for Malebranche, means merely accepting responsibility for one’s actions. Achievement is the antidote to widespread superficiality that esteems appearance over action. Respect means treating other adult men—regardless of sexual identification—as brothers. Finally, masculine honor has nothing to do with blood feuding and grudges. Rather, homosexual men would do well to keep their mouths shut about who their sexual partners are and what goes on between them. After outlining the values of his nascent movement, Malebranche offers suggestions for reclaiming masculinity.
Androphilia is not without problems. Malebranche has a tendency to universalize his own experiences. He claims political neutrality, but a cursory glance at his influences betray this—as is often the case—as a code word for conservatism. His obsessive emphasis on martial homosexuality similarly belies an essentially conservative and traditionalist worldview. Further, his critique of homosexuals affiliated with the Democratic Party seems bizarre considering it is the only major party not using homophobic bigotry to win votes. Perhaps Malebranche’s shrewdest observation is that it is patently fallacious to suggest that all homosexual men can or should organize under one banner and that all who fall without are self-loathers, equivalent to Jewish Nazis.
Androphilia is relevant and timely, tapping into the same energy as Brokeback Mountain, That’s Revolting and the novels of Chuck Palahniuk. It is also a pleasure to read, as Malebranche writes with an easy, relaxed style that is informal but never amateur. I have no doubt that Androphilia will soon be required reading for young homosexual men looking for an alternative to disco balls, rainbow flags and celebrity gossip.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
I Know It's Been A While Since I Last Rapped At Ya...
Hello again faithful readers of RFG. Things have been a bit hectic up here in Northwest Freetopia. I've recently been initiated into a dodectuple secret saptrap of the Invisible Illuminati (I . ' . I . ' .), had some difficulties in my personal life and taken on a number of new responsibilities at work. Thus I have not been able to bring you political coverage outside consensus reality for some time now. Well now I'm back to bring you this Monday's
Notes From the Police State: A Triptych
1. Police Riot At May Day Demonstration
Of course no one is safe anymore, not when police are shooting "less lethal" weapons at those esteemed guardians of freedom, the corporate American press. Perhaps some of my older readers remember the furor that erupted when the LAPD brutally assaulted Rodney King over fifteen years ago. The outcry was as instant as it was universal. However, the days when police brutality was seen as an aberration, a violation of citizens' rights (all citizens, not just those being beaten by uniformed thugs) are behind us. This is the post-9/11 world and we've got a new set of rules, so remember that freedom is a privilege, not a right! Groups of citizens exercising their Constitutional right to assemble and petition their government for redresses can now be attacked by storm troopers- provided of course that a "legal dispersal notice" has been given.
You think this is bad? Wait until these motherfuckers start using all their new toys. What gets used in Baghdad today will be used on the streets of Los Angeles, Boston, and Peoria tomorrow. You paid for it, America! And you supported it with your own fear of discomfort.
2. New York State & Big Brother
Any time one of your Yellow Dog Democrat friends brings up lesser-evilism and the necessity of compromise to unite forces against reaction in the name of progress, remind them of what Democrats do once they get into office. Gone are the progressive platitudes Governor Eliot Spitzer used to hoodwink the electorate. The mask has been removed as the former Attorney General is campaigning to assemble a state-wide DNA database of almost every criminal in New York State. Keep it progressive, Big E, keep it progressive!
The bill would collect DNA from non-violent offenders, including people busted for (you guessed it) possession of grass. Mayor Bloomberg supported the bill on the grounds that murderers smoke pot so busting murderers will be easier if we have DNA from every convicted pot smoker. Great thinking, Mike! The bill is being sold to the milquetoast American "left" by the Innocence Project as a means for exonerating the unjustly accused before they spend a day in jail. While I find the Innocence Project's faith in the Empire State's government touching, anyone convinced the State of New York gives a shit about seeing justice done must be unfamiliar with figures such as Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo and the literally thousands of Black, Latino, immigrant, homosexual and poor people who fail to make the papers after being beaten and murdered by the COURTESY PROFESSIONALISM AND RESPECT of New York City's boys in blue.
New York's Finest At Work, Protecting the Citizenry:
The first step was compiling DNA of sex offenders. Now it will be all offenders. How long until there is a national DNA database for everyone? Which argument will herd the American sheeple to support such a program? Will it be Door #1: Stopping lunatics before they snap or Door #2: Keeping innocent people out of jail or Door #3: A combination of both?
Sound far-fetched? Get in a time machine, go back to 1997 and try and tell people what the world today is like. See if they don't laugh you out of the galaxy.
3. OMG! No More MurdochSpace For Servicemen!
In a move entirely unrelated to the fact that the atrocities of war are easily accessible on the Internet (seriously... why would that have anything to do with it?) the Department of Defense has blocked servicemen's access to sites like MySpace, Youtube, Photobucket as well as Pandora and MTV.
I suppose that production of new glittering "FOR SERVICEMEN ONLY" icons will slow to a trickle in the face of this new DoD initiative to keep servicemen from communicating the atrocities of the Bush Junta's illegal and genocidal war in Iraq to the folks back home. More on this story as it develops...
LA Indy Media houses the definitive collection of links to stories about Los Angeles' finest Jackbooted thugs in ski masks wielding rubber bullets and chemical weapons aren't just for Axis of Evil luminaries such as Syria and Israel anymore. No, to beat the man you've got to become the man and the proto-fascist shock troops of Los Angeles are testing the police tactics of the future designed to keep law abiding citizens like you and I safe!
Of course no one is safe anymore, not when police are shooting "less lethal" weapons at those esteemed guardians of freedom, the corporate American press. Perhaps some of my older readers remember the furor that erupted when the LAPD brutally assaulted Rodney King over fifteen years ago. The outcry was as instant as it was universal. However, the days when police brutality was seen as an aberration, a violation of citizens' rights (all citizens, not just those being beaten by uniformed thugs) are behind us. This is the post-9/11 world and we've got a new set of rules, so remember that freedom is a privilege, not a right! Groups of citizens exercising their Constitutional right to assemble and petition their government for redresses can now be attacked by storm troopers- provided of course that a "legal dispersal notice" has been given.
You think this is bad? Wait until these motherfuckers start using all their new toys. What gets used in Baghdad today will be used on the streets of Los Angeles, Boston, and Peoria tomorrow. You paid for it, America! And you supported it with your own fear of discomfort.
2. New York State & Big Brother
Any time one of your Yellow Dog Democrat friends brings up lesser-evilism and the necessity of compromise to unite forces against reaction in the name of progress, remind them of what Democrats do once they get into office. Gone are the progressive platitudes Governor Eliot Spitzer used to hoodwink the electorate. The mask has been removed as the former Attorney General is campaigning to assemble a state-wide DNA database of almost every criminal in New York State. Keep it progressive, Big E, keep it progressive!
The bill would collect DNA from non-violent offenders, including people busted for (you guessed it) possession of grass. Mayor Bloomberg supported the bill on the grounds that murderers smoke pot so busting murderers will be easier if we have DNA from every convicted pot smoker. Great thinking, Mike! The bill is being sold to the milquetoast American "left" by the Innocence Project as a means for exonerating the unjustly accused before they spend a day in jail. While I find the Innocence Project's faith in the Empire State's government touching, anyone convinced the State of New York gives a shit about seeing justice done must be unfamiliar with figures such as Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo and the literally thousands of Black, Latino, immigrant, homosexual and poor people who fail to make the papers after being beaten and murdered by the COURTESY PROFESSIONALISM AND RESPECT of New York City's boys in blue.
New York's Finest At Work, Protecting the Citizenry:
The first step was compiling DNA of sex offenders. Now it will be all offenders. How long until there is a national DNA database for everyone? Which argument will herd the American sheeple to support such a program? Will it be Door #1: Stopping lunatics before they snap or Door #2: Keeping innocent people out of jail or Door #3: A combination of both?
Sound far-fetched? Get in a time machine, go back to 1997 and try and tell people what the world today is like. See if they don't laugh you out of the galaxy.
3. OMG! No More MurdochSpace For Servicemen!
In a move entirely unrelated to the fact that the atrocities of war are easily accessible on the Internet (seriously... why would that have anything to do with it?) the Department of Defense has blocked servicemen's access to sites like MySpace, Youtube, Photobucket as well as Pandora and MTV.
I suppose that production of new glittering "FOR SERVICEMEN ONLY" icons will slow to a trickle in the face of this new DoD initiative to keep servicemen from communicating the atrocities of the Bush Junta's illegal and genocidal war in Iraq to the folks back home. More on this story as it develops...
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