Attitude: Bodies

Attitude - Making you anxious about your body by constantly telling you what the ideal body should look like.

I shall say no more lest some lovely man at Attitude makes death threats.

Attitude: Exciting News!

Exciting news to start the week - we're under new ownership! https://t.co/W097g7NUmC pic.twitter.com/gigu9MhLOX

— Attitude (@AttitudeMag) 3 October 2016

In no way has the British gay media gone into meltdown.

This may be one reason why Matthew Todd walked last month.

Have the feeling there won't be an issue in 2017.

Could be wrong.

'Stream Publishing’s award-winning contract publishing portfolio includes titles produced for blue-chip clients CityJet, Cunard, Flybe, Hertz, Liberty, McColl’s Retail Group, P&O Cruises, SPAR and Vauxhall‎, as well as the wholly-ownedWinq, the luxury lifestyle magazine for gay men.'

Maybe not.

PS Who the felch would want to read anything after these cover lines?

And who the fuck is Nyle Dmarco?

Sorry, but this looks like patronising 'right-on' tokenism.

£5 for something boring you could read for free in QX!

World's Fucked: Bye

Even the Express thinks you're racist, sexist scum.

Attitude: Irony Klaxon!

Attitude.

Gay Media: Where Am I?

1. 
   

The Duke of Cambridge (Prince William to us proles) has appeared on the front page of the gay magazine Attitude, apparently to raise awareness and campaign against bullying. While undoubtedly a great cause, something rankles about it being seen as a brave and ground-breaking move for the royal family to sit down and talk to LGBT+ people about their lives in 2016. Although it’s a coup for Attitude and a news-stand hit in troubled times for the magazine industry, what we see is yet another white guy who is heterosexual on the front cover of a magazine aimed at gay and bisexual men.

Recently black queer rapper Mykki Blanco set off a discussion about the dominance of shirtless white guys in gay media (I hesitate to call it LGBT) on Twitter. Queer people of colour joined the debate on the #GayMediaSoWhite hashtag created by Vicktor T. The general consensus was that men of colour are rarely featured on the covers of major magazines, and if we are, we're usually part of a couple or group with white men. If not that, we might even feature on an alternate cover: see Attitude’s recent choice to feature model Laith Ashley on the cover, but to also offer up an alternate Matt Lister cover at the same time. There’s also an expectation that for media visibility, black men have to be extremely conventionally attractive and muscular, in a way that white straight reality TV and soap stars do not have to be.

If we featured at all inside the magazines, it’s usually in a feature about homophobia in our communities or majority black countries – important discussions, sure, but not our main stories... 

Independent Voices.

A good piece by Marcus Stow.
.
Hilarious and predictable comments ensue!

These people will never be satified, never be happy.  And it has nothing to do with their sex or lack of it. 'These people [!!!] will never be satified [sic], never be happy...', 'God that was painful. I can tell you're bleating and whining about something but I have no idea what...', 'What a load of whining bigoted tripe...', 'Not being awkward, but what's a "CIS white gay man? You'll have to forgive me - I'm a 74 year-old lady who HONESTLY doesn't know.' etc etc.

Diddums!

And here's the case for the defence.

Some posh lady saying Prince William might help enlighten the darkies in the colonies, basically.

Guardian Cif

God that was painful. I can tell you're bleating and whining about something but I have no idea what. You do realise that the world isn't perfect don't you?

Gay Icons: Cover Me

Attitude was launched in 1994 with Boy George on the front, and its cover remains a bastion of men in pants at a time when straight titles are increasingly coy about putting scantily clad women on theirs. The diver Tom Daley appeared topless after coming out in 2014, while the rugby player Gareth Thomas posed naked and nuzzling his boyfriend a few months later. Elton John and David Furnish celebrated their wedding on it in 2005, albeit fully clothed. Even Oscar Wilde has been inducted into the Attitude covers hall of fame.

Being chosen for it has become something of a status symbol among straight stars too. Where once the title had trouble recruiting hetero celebrities, now the Attitude cover has the power to define careers as well as cultural mores. There is a certain pride in being a gay icon...

The spot has become PR gold, changing perceptions of how even people who aren’t gay see those who appear on it. Justin Timberlake, George Clooney and Tom Hardy have all done it (in a wife-beater vest, lime green shirt and silken pyjamas respectively). Ed Miliband was a pin-up in May 2014, although he only removed his tie.

“There’s a sincerity test you have to conduct, so that you don’t just become part of people’s marketing strategy,” says the cultural commentator Paul Flynn. “Some readers are against straight men with their clothes off on the cover, but the men in pants aren’t going anywhere — they sell better.” ...

The Times.

I've often argued that any journalist that uses the fatuous term 'gay icon' knows nothing about gay culture.

It's a term no gay man ever uses in conversation, just an extremely elastic media fiction.

This journalist confuses 'Has appeared on the front cover of Attitude' with being a 'gay icon'.

Needless to say it was not written by a gay man.

And that graphic is so hideously unsexy, it can only have been designed by a straight man.

PS Ben Cohen a 'gay icon' still - LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!

PPS And in another tribute to gay fuckwittery BBC News magazine have got an article about rainbow tossing flags.

Attitude: 'One Loves One's Gay Fans'

And no one is a moral authority just because they dropped out of a royal vagina.

I don't care what the brain dead in-bred 'think' about anything.

Sake.

PS This is Matthew Todd's last issue as editor.

Gay Media: So White

A five point plan from Queerty.

No reader comments yet, but I guess a few might say something about people who work in glass offices etc.

#gaymediasowhite is now 'a thing' on Twitter.
 

2) #gaymediasowhite makes it seem like being featured in these tired vapid glossies is a/the goal. Like they aren't worthy of me.

— Blaqueer (@Blaqueer) March 29, 2016

Incidentally here's the latest issue of Attitude.

And The Advocate.

So everything is alright now.

Attitude: The The

Dear The Attitude,

Neither Pet Shop Boys or Sleaford Mods have a 'the'.

Thanks. x

PS Pet Shop Boys Symposium, Edinburgh College Of Art. 'Analysing pop music is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.' Discuss.

PPS Forthcoming 4-part Radio 2 documentary, Chart, celebrating PSB's 30 years in the business of show.

Princess Di: An Amusing Fiction

It’s 1988 and queer London is partying hard under the spectre of AIDS, the scrutiny of the press and the shadow of Clause 28.

When Princess Diana dreams of a wild night out away from the long lenses of the paparazzi and the ruthless Royals at the Palace, best buddies Freddie Mercury and Kenny Everett know there’s only one place to take her: the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.
 
But getting one of the world’s most famous faces through the front door (and without blowing her cover) is the premise of brand new musical Royal Vauxhall, opening at the infamous venue later this month. We had a chat with one of the show’s leading men, Reuben Kaye, who steps into the shoes of Freddie Mercury, David Bowie and London drag icon Regina Fong…

Attitude.

Seeing as Cleo Rocos forgot to include this anecdote in her 1998 book, Forever Bananas: Kenny Everett and me, but suddenly remembered it when pushing a new edition, Kenny & Me, in 2013, I think it's fair to assume it never really happened.
x

Attitude: Why We Love Gus Kenworthy!

Cause you're a bunch of Roedean schoolgirls?

'Come on chaps, let's go skiing!'

Chemsex: Don't (Moral) Panic

A surprising amount of media coverage has been dedicated to a niche sexual phenomenon known as “chemsex” in recent weeks. First identified by sexual health services around 2011, chemsex refers to gay male group sex parties fuelled by a mix of the recreational drugs GHB, mephadrone and crystal meth. It has been claimed that these parties, which can last longer than a day, have been linked to the spread of HIV infections and could lead to a public health crisis.

As part of our research into the phenomenon, my colleague Alison Winch and I have begun analysing the media coverage of chemsex - which includes a Radio 4 documentary, a Vice film called Chemsex, two plays, and multiple articles in newspapers and magazines.

Some common themes have emerged: that chemsex is on the rise among gay men; that most, if not all, gay men’s engagement with chemsex is a form of self-harm rooted in internalised homophobia; that chemsex leads to physical as well as mental health issues - and sometimes death; and, most critically, that the practice is linked to a recent increase in HIV transmission in the UK. Like all media debates that verge on moral panic, this view of chemsex is partial, distorted and, on occasion, hysterical.

The way chemsex has been portrayed not only draws on a familiar repertoire of homophobic, but also on some pretty flimsy science. From all the data that has so far been collected on, it is possible to say that chemsex is a growing phenomenon – but it only partially resembles its media coverage.

There is little evidence to suggest that it is on the rise amongst Britain’s gay community as a whole. According to the The Chemsex Study, the most comprehensive study on chemsex in Britain to date, the practice is becoming popular in London; even more specifically, in the boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham – Vauxhall, and its surrounding areas. What can be most reasonably deduced is that similar numbers of men who used to take cocaine, ecstasy and other party drugs on Vauxhall’s dance floors in the 2000s are now taking different drugs, in more sexualised ways, in private accommodation and gay saunas. This is a subtle but important difference. 

The question to ask about chemsex is not why more gay men are engaging it, but why a particular cohort of gay men stopped taking certain party drugs on the dancefloors of Vauxhall and started taking others in different settings?

My research suggests a variety of partial explanations: the gentrification of Vauxhall and its gay scene; the unsustainably high cost of living in London; cuts to local community services; and the issues migrants face when they move into these sorts of conditions. Chemsex can be seen as a particularly intense way for groups of people to form intimate collective bonds at a time when the government’s social and economic policies attempt to make this very thing impossible.

This is not the account given in the media. The most common explanation of chemsex is that gay men have internalised homophobia in ways that cause them to experiment with drugs and sex. There is some evidence to suggest this is the case for some men. And if it is, who is to say that it is necessarily always self-destructive? Like all human behaviours, it can be - and clearly it is for some people.

A major reason for the media coverage of chemsex as destructive is that most of the first-hand accounts of the experience come from people who present it as a problem at sexual health clinics. The media then select the most horrifying of these. The fact that men (or anyone else) might have sex on drugs simply because, as academic Kane Race puts it, “it feels nice” is a perspective that is under-researched and under-represented.

As for the connection between chemsex and HIV transmission, there is little academic consensus on this: half the studies state that there might be a link between drugs and sexual risk taking, but the other half say there is not. Where HIV transmission might be connected to chemsex, it is difficult to establish whether the drugs had any influence or whether those men would have engaged in unprotected sex anyway...

An excellent piece for Independent Voices by Jamie Hakim, senior lecturer in media studies at the University of East Anglia.

He's a former deputy editor of Attitude, interestingly, currently the gay media outlet most vigorously pushing the PANIC button.

PS For the record, I think this is the second non-hysterical piece about chemsex in the UK media in the last two months, compared to coming up to twenty hysterics.

Anyway, hurrah for pink yellow journalism!

Warwick Rowers 2015: Those Unsexy Posh Twats Have Got Another Calendar Out!

None more posh!*

Still missing wanking over your fave prefect at boarding school?

This one's for you, poshboy!

And a snip at £14.99 (an unspecified amount of money goes to something we invented called Sport Allies)!

By Christ and Tolstoy, this country needs a revolution.

The hills are alive with hooray henrys braying.

* Apart from the interns at Attitude, obvs.

Attitude: Inevitably

Attitude explores the reality of ‘chemsex’ and the rising use of party drugs like crystal meth, mephedrone and GHB across an in-depth, 18-page feature. We hear from 18 gay/bisexual men, who talk frankly about their own personal experience of using drugs and the devastating affect its had on both themselves and those around them.

Attitude.

Not read it yet, but presume they haven't just spoken to 18 men that drugs have had a 'devastating affect' [Effect?] on, yes?

Update: I was touched by Matthew Todd's editor's letter acknowledging how much Fagburn has set the agenda for the chemsex debate. x

PS Can people stop saying variations on 'Let's talk about gay sex and drugs' - have you not noticed EVERYBODY IS? 

Even if they're usually just quoting London's in-no-way hysterical anti-chemsex party cabal...

Chemsex: What Is To Be Done?

The media-manufactured moral panic about chemsex continues apace in this article for Attitude online.

Apparently, it's all because of 'loneliness'.

All the sad young chemsex gayz...

But remember kids; 'Drugs are not, in themselves, bad.'

Phew.

Can a special issue on the CHEMSEX APOCALYPSE!!! be far off?

Chemsex: The Trailer

Chemsex: the name given to the rising phenomenon which refers to the use of drugs in a sexual context. Often referring to group sex that can last for days, the allure of chemsex has lead to many young men being trapped in a vicious circle of sex, addiction and dependence.

This powerful and potent film tells the stories of gay men whose lives have been affected by the crisis; from self-confessed ‘slammers’ to sexual health workers, from those who deny there’s a problem to those who ‘got out alive’. Offering unprecedented access, Chemsex is a brave and unflinching journey into the dark underworld of modern, urban gay life.
 
“VICE has always endeavoured to explore underreported [LOL!!!] and complex issues that involve incredible characters and human stories. After vice.com first reported in 2013 on the unprecedented rise in intravenous drug use in London’s gay party scene, we felt that story needed to be explored further,” said Al Brown, Head of Video at VICE...

Attitude online - I bet they'll do a special CHEMSEX! issue soon.

Seen the two (2) plays, read all the hysterical articles, now watch the movie!

It's the subject 'no-one's talking about' that everyone's talking about!

Warning: Contains David Stuart and doubtless the rest of London's Chemsex Hysterics Anonymous cabal.

Matthew Parris: Victims

Over my political lifetime I’ve watched a common English noun acquire a kind of holiness. The word is “victim”. In almost every field of politics and administration it is being used to lift claims beyond proper scrutiny.

So widely has this word now been stretched that at least one group of victims have appropriated to their cause the word “survivor” — “victim” being no longer enough. Victimhood is used everywhere as a weapon for getting priority, money or attention. It isn’t always wrong; but it is way of seeing the world that risks distorting our perspectives on government...

Gay men in Britain have been lucky our claimed victim status never turned sour. I feared it would — and did have some hint of that in the “what will they want next?” response that gay marriage legislation attracted from some. The HIV/Aids campaign must be counted a success for victim-led campaigning but I was never comfortable with the conflation of homosexuality with victimhood. Aids was a disease. So is lung cancer. Sufferers must be offered all help and sympathy, and the apportionment of blame is cruel and fruitless. But Aids did not make gay rights a nobler cause; the whimper that homosexuals “can’t help it” infuriates me — what difference should it make if we could? — and (vigorous supporter of Stonewall’s work though I remain) it is high time gays stopped playing the sympathy card, held our heads up and accepted we no longer have any urgent claim on the nation’s finite supply of pity...

The Times. 

Of course some have founded an entire career on presenting gay men as perpetual eternal victims.

PS This from Queerty is something of a masterclass in the 'We hate ourselves so much we are literally fucking and drugging ourselves to death!' mis lit school of gay journalism.

Wouldn't be suprised if he gets asked to write a column for Attitude.

Putin: Is Lovely - Official

Elton John’s husband David Furnish has called Vladimir Putin “genuinely lovely” and has confirmed the star will meet the Russian leader.

Putin, 63 – who has invaded [sic] Crimea, backed civil war in Ukraine and sent his forces to help Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad – phoned Sir Elton last month to arrange the meeting to discuss gay rights.

The call came a week after the singer was duped by two Moscow comedians pretending to be the president.

During the talk Putin apparently asked Elton not to be offended by the prank which was broadcast on Russian TV.

Yesterday film producer Furnish, 52, said: “Putin is lovely. He and Elton spoke on the phone and the Kremlin have confirmed that.

“Now they’re trying to get a date in the diary to talk face to face.”

Speaking at the Attitude awards in London on Wednesday night, he added: “That may surprise people but I take people as I find them and he was so polite and lovely on the phone.

“He’s genuinely lovely. Besides, this isn’t about politics – I’m not a politician – it’s about humanity.” ...

Mirror.

Told you.

Attitude Awards: Best Tits

Mirror.

Mail.

Always amusing that this is how the tabloids invariably report about 'Europe's biggest gay magazine''s annual awards ceremony.

Phwoar! etc.

PS Fagburn's invite appeared to be lost in the post again...

John Grant: My Life Story

Michigan, Colorado, Christian family, homophobia, fucked him up, Germany, The Czars, failed, homophobia, alcohol, cocaine, sex, AA, Queen Of Denmark, album of the year, HIV positive, Pale Green Ghosts, Iceland, new boyfriend, happier, new album... 

The Times.

Wouldn't you like to read an interview with John Grant for once that didn't just re-tell his life story?

PS Not sure if the use of the cliché 'who happens to be gay' here is ironic, but it's hard to think of an artist where being gay is more central to his work.