Richard Lyon

http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulb3tZU8vsk I just watched this clip on YouTube. It is the perfect sendup of straight guys and their "intimacy".

I think that serious female novelists have tended to focus on the details of relationships more that serious straight male novelists. Gay male novelists do seem to be similarly concerned, if not perhaps obsessed, with relationships.

You ain't Michael Phelps either.

These kind of pop psychology gimmicks always rely on fairly lame gender stereotypes. I suspect that if you ran it of works of famous serious writers of both genders, you'd get very mixed results. To the extent that books are written to appeal to specific pop gender markets, such as women's romance and men's action adventure, it ought to work better on them.

Maybe what you are missing are the voices she heard in her head.

Virginia Woolf said what you need is "A room of one's own and 500 pounds a year". That figure would have to be increased considerably for inflation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_pandemic#United_States In the United States in particular, a new wave of infection is being blamed on the use of methamphetamine, known as crystal meth. Research presented at the 12th Annual Retrovirus Conference in Boston in February 2005 concluded that using crystal meth or cocaine is the biggest single risk factor for becoming HIV+ among US gay men, contributing 29% of the overall risk of becoming positive and 28% of the overall risk of being the receptive partner in anal sex [5]. In addition, several renowned clinical psychologists now cite methamphetamine as the biggest problem facing gay men today, including Michael Majeski, who reckons meth is the catalyst for at least 80% of seroconversions currently occurring across the United States, and Tony Zimbardi, who calls methamphetamine the number one cause of HIV transmission, and says that high rates of new HIV infection are not being found among non-crystal users. In addition, various HIV and STD clinics across the United States report anecdotal evidence that 75% of new HIV seroconversions they deal with are methamphetamine-related; indeed, in Los Angeles, methamphetamine is regarded as the main cause of HIV seroconversion among gay men in their late thirties[6]

There is resent research that indicates that Africans and people of African ancestry may be more susceptible to AIDS infection as a result of an adaption that protects against malaria.

One article I read on this story stated that while the number of people with active infections among some groups has shown a decline, it continues to increase among gay and bi men. This is where the epidemic started and it is still ground zero. 25 years of education does not seem to have been able to change that. I'd be interested to see more information about the gay men that are acquiring the new infections. My suspicion would be that those who are some what out and in contact with a wider gay community get the information and those who seriously closeted don't. However, it may well be more complicated than that.

That's a good point. People from different cultural backgrounds vary greatly in the way that they express anger. A well mannered WASP may feel that saying, "I was quite upset by your remark" is a clear and unequivocal expression of anger. However, if he's talking to an Italian, it may pass as a casual remark.

I think it's unfortunate that the term homophobia has become used as though it is synonymous with all forms of anti-gay prejudice. The original notion for the term was something that was psychologically rooted and likely convoluted. Anti-gay prejudice can arise from economic and political factors, religious bigotry, etc. Much of that is abating in western industrial society along with and closely linked to the changes in gender roles. That change will leave us with the question as to how much of the weird and exotic behavior of straight men might be peculiar to their very nature. I do believe that we can make cultural changes in some of the nastier forms of prejudice, but human sexuality will remain. It gives rise to strong and ofter troubling feelings. Achieving comfortable intimacy seems to run at cross purposes with sexual arousal or the fear of it.

I enjoy reading literary biographies. It is always very interesting to read the historical reality of people whose novels you have read and to try to figure out how the facts shaped the fiction.

There seem to be two issues here. Whether certain types of writing are more valuable than others and whether there are rules that should be followed for particular types of writing. It seems to me that particular genres do have their on inherent requirements. A mystery writer who starts out with the butler did it and works backward is probably missing the point. The basic purpose of mystery stories is to build suspense. As a genre they have their established cliches and the hardcore fans adore them. Is Agatha Christie equal to Virginia Woolf? Personally I don't think so, but if you put that in terms of Dorothy Sayers I might have to think about it . Porn writing certainly has its requirements. Porn that wanders off into a fashion critique at the height of passion is probably also missing the point. One question that occurs to me is whether there is something called gay writing that constitutes a specific genre with its own rules. I really don't think so. There's gay mystery stories. There's gay porn. There are gay romances. There are gay stories that pursue the objectives of "serious" literature. The only thing that they have in common is that they have characters who are gay and are probably written by authors who are gay or lesbian. That doesn't provide much basis for a common set of rules. There seems to be a tendency for some people who write gay stories to think that their gay stories are what all gay stories should be like. None of this is intended to suggest that no one can or should attempt to evaluate and criticize writing. Intuitively we pretty much know that some things "work" and others don't. To me the starting point is to try to figure out what a particular author is attempting to accomplish and to evaluate whether they achieved it. A really good writer can take something that is improbable and unrealistic and convince readers that it is real and believable.