Drop The T: Spoiler

A petition started by gay and bisexual men and women is calling for LGBTI news websites like Gay Star News as well as organizations such as GLAAD to stop representing the transgender community.

Spoiler! We’re not going to do that.

Gay Star News.

Well, you wouldn't would you?

Snore!

Of course we should stand by trans people, I just wish the gay media only used LGBT when it's appropriate.

Do GSN mean 'gay and bisexual men and women' [sic] here?

Or LGBs?

ICYMI!!! Intellectual charlatan Camille Paglia being predictably barking on 'transgender mania.'

PS Oh goody! Another pointless petition, if only I could work out who they're petitioning...

Pink News.

David Bowie: "Golden Years"

A few years back I had an amusing email exchange with Angie Bowie when I was trying to fix up an interview.
She broke it off with the immortal line that she was bored with talking about David Bowie. 
Anyway, I'm happy to report that she's in-no-way bonkers, nor has she ever tried to trade on David's name nor cash in on his success.
She's also a reliable source of information on the Dame back in the early days, and - by golly - she's never told any of these stories in the Sun Sunday before has she?  
If you haven't OD-ed on DB coverage in the media recently, you might want to read this Guardian piece - When Bowie Met Burroughs - by Jon Savage instead.
A strange title, as it's actually an overview of his glittering career and - though it's been a cliche in all the recent safety blanket coverage - his terrific cultural impact.
Whatever it's a rare interesting and insightful piece amongst a tidal wave of tired old guff.  
Most papers seem to think they can get away with stars reminisces of the golden years, or by filling a few pages with some old photos and "insights" cribbed from the book accompanying the upcoming V&A exhibition David Bowie Is...
(It opens in a fortnight - interesting timing seeing as no-one knew about this comeback). 
The Sunday Times Magazine has lifted a whole article from the book, Oh! You Pretty Thing, by... Camille Paglia.
Can't believe anyone still takes this silly old fraud seriously anymore.
For once be grateful if you can't get behind the Murdoch paywall.    

The Death Of Camp: Groundhog Gay

One of the problems of reading gay journalism and the gay press for a few years is it starts to feel like Groundhog Day.
The same arguments and the same articles keep coming around again and again and again.
But while you feel trapped in this realm of endless repetition, the journalist you're reading is convinced his tired words and old cliches are saying something breathtakingly bold and new.
There's a piece in The Guardian today announcing 'The Death Of Camp - Effeminate gay men are an increasingly rare sight now the 'straight-acting' are in the ascendency'.
The author, Kevin Troughton, doesn't like "camp" or "effeminate gay men".
Thankfully they're a dying breed.
Ding-dong the witches are dead.
Most of the gay men he knows are "straight-acting", he says proudly.
Many gay men fancy "masculine" men, he proffers as proof of some paradigm shift.
As if Quentin Crisp et al hadn't been saying the same thing way back in the last century.
Troughton thinks he has discovered a new "masculine gay man... now he's mainstream, confident and critical of the camp-it-up gay scene".
Good for him. Grrr!
He seems unaware that you could regularly read silly articles arguing just this in Gay News in the 1970s.
"If only gay men could be less gay what a wonderful world it would be..."
Writers are always announcing the death or the end of something.
In Septemper in The Sunday times Camille Paglia announced 'The Death Of Sex'.
It sounds good, dramatic, daring.
But like Francis Fukuyama's The End Of History, it's usually just wishful thinking.
And hearing of "The Death Of Camp" just sounds like history repeating.
Self-loathing masquerading as critique.

Lady Gaga: More Blah Blah Blah

It appears to be open season on attacking Lady Gaga.
Shame.
After Camille Paglia's drivelfest in The Sunday Times last weekend, yesterday's Guardian staged 'The Lady Gaga Debate'.
"Is Lady Gaga an important feminist, a force for good? Or is she simply a canny performance artist?"
Erm, how about both?
Today's Daily Mail calls her "Lady Contrick: To her fans Lady Gaga is a cutting edge style icon. But is she really just a shameless plagiarist?"
Again, she's both, love.
And in The Independent she gets the fantastically vacuous headline; 'Ghost In The Fame Machine'.
Sounds good, shame it doesn't mean anything.
"No pop star so vividly embodies the values of the internet age. But what lies behind the catchy tunes and outrageous outfits?"
You tell me.
Ironically, this article owes a debt to Camille Paglia in much the same way that Lady Gaga owes a debt to Madonna.
Oops.
So many words, so little insight.
One of Fagburn's favourite music writers, Simon Reynolds, gave probably the most insightful comment on Lady Gaga on his blog last year.

'Lada Gaga = Fischerspooner with tits

but also

Lady Gaga = Fischerspooner, with hits'

Simon Reynolds expanded on his brilliant thesis here.

Lady Blah Blah: Camille Paglia on Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga: What’s Sex Got To Do With It?
By Camille Paglia

[The Digested Read]

Fans see Gaga as a breaker of taboos, but America’s foremost cultural critic argues she is a copycat who has seduced the internet generation

"Lady Gaga is the first major star of the digital age.
She's not as good as Madonna, Theda Bara, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Mae West, Jean Harlow, Hedy Lamarr, Rita Hayworth, Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Madonna, Madonna, Madonna, vagina, Bob Fosse, Cher, Jane Fonda as Barbarella, Gwen Stefani, Pink, Isabella Blow, Daphne Guinness, drag queens, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Lily Allen, Nelly Furtado, Elton John, Boy George, David Bowie, Andy Warhol, Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, Bette Midler, Tina Turner or Janis Joplin.
She's on a major label, she can't sing, her image is manufactured, and her fans are marooned in a global technocracy of fancy gadgets.
Did I say "vagina"?
Can it be that Gaga represents the exhausted end of the sexual revolution?
Is it the death of sex?
Will this do?"

Camille Paglia is a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She is the Norma Desmond and Baby Jane Hudson of academe