Fwd: Re: Safe Sex is No Fun

[Tresy Kilbourne]

>oh yeh--sometime we ought to admit that pynchon's got annoying alignment
>between homosexuality and decadence/perversity.  this read-through of GR
>i really noticed it.  only in the scene when Katje and Pirate talk about
>loving all of Humanity did i find a place where homosexual conduct wasnt
>immediately associated with lisping sub-humans.  yeesh.

I was wondering when someone would mention this. I agree. It's too bad, 
too, but I excuse it as an artifact of 60's countercultural blinders. 
It's a common myth that the counterculture (of which GR is the most 
splendid legacy) was sexually tolerant, when in fact it was quite sexist 
and homophobic. I don't think GR is sexist (though there is a strain of 
gender essentialism that seems hard to ignore), but the linking of 
homosexuality to sterility and death is pretty consistent, and typical of 
60s thinking on the subject. Ironic and heartening, then, that Pynchon 
later penned a blurb for the bisexual "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."

________
Tresy Kilbourne
Seattle, WA 
PGP key @ http://www.halcyon.com/tresyk/home.htm or via finger