Good sex is all about having intentional conversations with your partner — and understanding your own mind and body
sexuality
Posted inEquality
Pronouns are small but mean a lot
For trans and non-binary Africans like Matthew Blaise, sexual identification and acknowledgment is a daily struggle
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Health, Lifestyle, Media
Do we still need an International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia?
By Pierre Brouard Do we still need an International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOT), to draw attention to the violence and discrimination experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people and all other people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities or expressions, and sex characteristics? If this year’s events I attended are […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Health, Media, News/Politics
Creating space to talk about the politics of shame
By Rebecca Helman and Neziswa Titi In their interview with Elspeth Probyn, Vivienne Bozalek, Tamara Shefer and Ronelle Carolissen argue that “[s]hame has typically been understood as a negative emotion, a view which is prevalent in individualist, psychologising discourses about human experience”. Conversely Probyn argues that shame can be a generative force, one which is […]
Posted inEquality, Health, Lifestyle, Media
Researching and re-imagining the “Fag Hag”
By Zipho Dolamo We’ve all heard the term “fag hag” – generally defined as a heterosexual woman who primarily associates and maintains friendships with gay men. Bruce Rodgers is one of the authors accredited for coining the concept in his 1972 book The Queen’s Vernacular: A Gay Lexicon. Rodgers(1972, p.78) defines a fag hag as: […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle
When do intimate relationships work?
I raise this question more as a kind of self-reflection than a hard-and-fast recipe of sorts. The latter cannot be supplied by anyone, for the “simple” reason that human beings are very complex creatures. While the interpersonal areas I reflect on below may indeed be important in all intimate relationships (and I do believe that […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Health, Lifestyle
We’re all born naked, everything else is (a) drag
By Pierre Brouard When Caitlyn Jenner recently visited the Academy for Young Writers, an LGBTI-friendly school in a working-class New York neighbourhood, she was expecting some flak. In particular, from two youngsters, living non-binary lives, who had been vocal in their criticisms of her. Caitlyn was privileged, they said, had made disparaging remarks about “men […]
Posted inHealth, Lifestyle, Media
Sex is complex: Gender, HIV and Charlie Sheen’s disclosure
By Pierre Brouard So Charlie Sheen is in trouble again — this time because he has been forced to disclose his HIV status to be one step ahead of the tabloids, and to cut off the money supply to extortionists who had him over a barrel. The competing narratives around his disclosure have been fascinating: […]
Posted inEquality, General
Racism, sexism and homophobia: Which prejudice is worse?
By Matthew Beetar Racism is more of a problem than sexism. But sexism is more of a problem than xenophobia, which is less of a problem — occasionally — than homophobia. Transphobia we deal with sometimes, and ageism — what is that even? And dealing with ableism — let’s not take this “reconciliation” thing too […]
Posted inEquality, General
Of birth rights and gay rights
By Steven Hussey “Nobody is born gay” reads the headline of a billboard by a so-called “pro-ex-gay” non-profit in the United States. The ad shows identical twin brothers with the revelation, “One gay. One not.” Profound. Ironically, the openly gay South African model featured in the ad, who has no twin brother and whose image […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence
‘I am penis, hear me roar’: The threat of lesbianism
Men seem to labour under the misapprehension that sex is about them. This is not a hastily made statement, there is some evidence behind it. Exhibit A: The idea that men think they’re “putting the D” to or “giving it” to someone. The rhetoric gives the impression that the rest of us come to the […]
Posted inEquality
The ancient Greeks’ wisdom regarding sexual orientation
As history unfolds, people tend to regard earlier eras as being surpassed in practically all areas of cultural activity, the most obvious one being technology — “progress” regarding which, incidentally, seems to me to be proportional to retrogression in other spheres of culture, specifically self-understanding: the more gadgets there are to be fascinated by, the […]