News and Announcements
BY Claire Potter ON November 15, 2014
- Transgender Awareness Week, November 14-20:
In New York, GMHC is sponsoring a day of remembrance and a vigil on Thursday, November 20. To learn more, go to the GLAAD website. - Shirley Clarke’s 1967 documentary “Portrait of Jason” is in re-release in DVD and Blu-Ray. In this landmark film, shot over one 12-hour period , Jason Holliday “talks about his life, working as a gay hustler, his love and hate of sex, stories of previous jobs and showing off all the well-known names he’s ‘friends’ with. He’s also keen to stress that he’s a performer and that rather than continuing with prostitution (which reading between the lines it appears is becoming tougher for him to make money from now he’s getting older) he wants to be an entertainer.” HT: Big Gay Picture Show.
- A five week course on the history of AIDS is being offered by the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, a university without walls. It begins on Tuesday, November 18: go here for details.
- Queer collections at the Smithsonian. Stephanie Fairyington at The Advocate interviews National Museum of American HIstory curator Kathleen Ott about the history of LGBT material culture. “Standout items include a tennis racket from transgender maverick Renée Richards, who famously won a New York Supreme Court case against the United States Tennis Association, ensuring that she and other trans players would be allowed to compete as their reassigned sex; protest signs from activist Frank Kameny, the co-founder, in 1961, of D.C.’s Mattachine Society, a gay advocacy group; the original transgender pride flag, designed by trans woman Monica Helms in 1999; a tennis dress worn by Grand Slam superstar Billie Jean King; and memorabilia from the set of Will and Grace, the groundbreaking TV show that helped bring gay awareness to households across the nation.” Read the full article here (but turn your sound down to avoid the annoying vodka ad.)
- Rita Mae Brown video in the Makers series: in which Rita Mae describes 1970s dyke clothing and grooming as a rebellion against femininity, and puts it down in retrospect as decidedly unfashionable. Speaking of trans awareness: as Brown forgotten that freedom from gender actually allowed some feminists to adopt masculine dress as a matter of pride and style? Can I get a witness here?
- The 100th Issue of Radical Teacher is now available for free online. This historic issue includes work by Louis Kampf, Tommi Avicolli, Cherrie Moraga, and Barbara Smith.
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