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Title: Life Outside - The Signorile Report on Gay Men: Sex, Drugs, Muscles, and the Passages of Life by Michelangelo Signorile ISBN: 0-06-092904-9 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.84 (25 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The mirror can be painful...
Comment: ....Of course this isn't dry and erudite social criticism; it doesn't pretend to be. What it does do is pose some very difficult questions and shed light on some behaviors that gay men (including myself) must address. I have to admit that there were certainly things I did not agree with in Signorile's book. And the repetitveness of terminology and thoughts ocassionally grated, but by and large this book made me pause and think. That, whether passing the muster of pretentious dialectic dogma or not, is a clear representation of the power of an author who is uncovering something that is worth considering. And the fact that many other gay men have responded to this book so powerfully means that it IS speaking to some underlying deep questioning that folks are doing about what we as gay men have become post-Stonewall. As an Ivy- educated young gay urban professional, I am more than capable of distinguishing between what I consider to be great writing or not. And Signorile is not my only choice in the panolpy of authors writing contemporary gay social critcism. However, he is one I will continue to read until the things he says no longer feel/seem relevant to me
Rating: 2
Summary: Seriously flawed and disappointing
Comment: As a gay man who has lived in NYC since the 50s I found Signorile's picture of gay male life in the Fifties and Sixties and the judgements he made about those years to be a mass of threadbare cliches. Good God! Who did he interview to get such a narrow and crippled portrait of those years? He clearly lacks a knowledge of the broad range and nuancing of the gay male subculture of that era. This very poor beginning makes it difficult to take the rest of the book as seriously as Signorile clearly wants the reader to.
The "post-AIDS" era of the gay male subculture has been marked by a terribly uneasy attitude toward the preceding pre-AIDS era, and has seen the male subculture become something of a caboose on the train of feminism, with ambiguous and sometimes bogus issues of political correctness and the emulation of mainstream - white, middle class - goals and lifestyles being promoted as desiderata. Signorile's book is evidence of this interesting turn of events, but it is not much in the way of an analysis.
The entire work would have come off better if the author had skipped the assertions of research and simply done it as an confessional essay entitled something on the order of "Afraid of Ourselves."
George Chauncey's "Gay New York" was a credible study of the history and sociology of pre-WW II gay New York. We need something as fine and well done on the later years of gay American history. This book isn't it.
Rating: 5
Summary: This Insightful book offers much for reflection
Comment: Signorile's purpose in writing this book is to show that there is not simply one way to be gay, the way propagated by the "urban gay sexual subcultural scene" (described in part one), which demands conformity to a rigid set of unwritten standards and beliefs that defines what one must do to fit in with the gay community. Part two shows how some gay men, although influenced by the "scene," are living in different ways and by different values.
I recommend this book to anyone who is uncomfortable with conforming to certain standards of the "scene" and its ideology, and to those who feel like "outsiders" to the gay community just because their values, interests, and lifestyle don't match the gay stereotyical mold of the "scene." I also highly recommend this as a resource to counselors of gay men, as it will help with understanding the dynamics and struggles of those both "in" and 'outside" the "scene."
The powerful influence of the "scene" has made me feel different and as an "outsider" both in heterosexual society and in the gay community. I found hope in realizing there are others out there who share my interests and values, and who will accept me for who I am. For this book I am grateful.
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Title: Queer in America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power by Michelangelo Signorile, University of Wisconsin Press ISBN: 0299193748 Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press Pub. Date: 15 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969 by William J. Mann ISBN: 0142001147 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: November, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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