Innehållsförteckning för December - January 2019-20 från The Advocate

I RECENTLY GOT A NOTE FROM a 73-year-old gay man who said that The Advocate magazine had gone someplace really exciting recently, someplace that felt “really unfamiliar and foreign” to him as an older gay white man—but also interesting and “vibrant and hopeful, a world of diversity and freedom” he could have never imagined as a closeted young man. Because most of the criticism I get these days comes from gay men over 50, I’ll admit I was honestly buoyed by the letter. I never want age or gender or race to keep people from seeing themselves in this magazine. We’re trying to include people whom we’ve historically excluded Honestly, the world today is largely unfamiliar to many of us who came out before 2000. We’ve watched the history happen,…

LION KING Disney star Joshua Rush (below, The Lion Guard, Andi Mack) came out as bisexual on Twitter and encouraged his followers to donate to GLAAD and the Trevor Project, tweeting, “Bi erasure and issues like it are important, but trans women of color still have a life expectancy of THIRTY FIVE YEARS and that is absolutely unacceptable.” BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS In honor of GLAAD’s Spirit Day 2019, Kellogg’s released a $20 special edition “All Together,” containing six mini cereal boxes “to celebrate the belief that we all belong together.” Spirit Day is the largest, most visible antibullying campaign in the world where millions wear purple to “support a more accepting world for LGBTQ youth.” Kellogg’s is donating $50,000 to GLAAD. YAS, QUEEN Gay high school student Brandon Allen (below),…

RESEARCH PRESENTED AT the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City earlier this year shows promising results for a new HIV prevention implant by the drug company Merck. According to data, the implant might be able to protect people against the virus for an entire year. The implant contains the investigational drug islatravir, the first in a new class of drugs called nucleoside reverse transcriptase translocation inhibitors, “which block movement of the enzyme responsible for cloning HIV’s RNA so that it can infect new cells,” as described by The New York Times. Similar to strategies used for birth control, this implant is a matchstick-sized plastic rod that would be inserted under the skin of the upper arm and would slowly release tiny doses of islatravir. Conducted by Merck, the trial is…

EVER SINCE I was little, I have been a blue-ribbon homosexual in a bright red state. As soon as I could stand, I wanted to dance. As soon as I could walk, I wanted to strut. And as soon as I saw Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing, I knew that someday I wanted to kiss a boy on the mouth. But it wasn’t until the reality of being in Texas came into focus that I realized my swishy, sparkly tendencies were going to be an issue. The thing about being born queer is you can’t exactly choose where you get to grow up. I was fortunate enough to be born in America, but that is where my luck stopped. My family was from the sticks of east Texas, where there…

Karine Jean-Pierre is a woman who knows how to get things done. The MSNBC political analyst has been a key figure in three presidential campaigns, including Barack Obama’s historic victory, and has successfully pressured big corporations like Walmart to change unfair labor practices. Now she wants you to get involved in our nation’s politics, and she won’t accept any excuses. “No one handed it to me. I had to go out and take it,” Jean-Pierre says of realizing her political power in this country. The lesbian Haitian-American adds, “I got involved. I worked on campaigns and for politicians. Eventually, [I] worked my way all the way to the White House. My advice: Work hard, don’t take no for an answer, and never burn any bridges.” In addition to speaking truth…

“YOU KNOW, SOME of the biggest mistakes people make is that they don’t read anything,” Roxane Gay (right with Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom) tells The Advocate during a break from the 2019 Werk It festival. The two-day women’s podcast festival in Los Angeles featured conversations, workshops, live tapings, networking events, one-on-one mentoring sessions, and the Podcast Accelerator—an opportunity for anyone to pitch a show, incubate a pilot, and score a development deal with WNYC Studios, the festival’s sponsor. Gay is at Werk It representing the podcast Hear to Slay that she hosts with Cottom, another prominent Black feminist author. But Gay is speaking about the fat discrimination and body shaming she endured while promoting Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body. The searing autobiography bravely delves into taboo subjects, including Gay’s…

EPICURIOUS 1) Barefoot Wines has been a strong supporter of the LGBTQ community since 1988, so return the favor and gift a bottle to a woman who wines. ($10, TheBarrelRoom.com) 2) From another longtime supporter comes the new Stoli Holiday Gift Pack which comes with a portable charger ($20, Stoli.com). ($35, ReserveBar.com) 3) The best rugelach is in New York City. Get Lee Lee’s Rugelach by a Brother, the POC-owned Harlem shop that has been a Hanukkah fave for decades. ($18+, LeeLeesRugelach.com) 4) Chicago’s gay-owned Epic Gourmet Popcorn offers Pride-themed gift sets, including the Coming Out Box. ($35, EpicPopcorn.com) 5) Freeze-filtered eLit Vodka’s gift set features a bottle of vodka with a 12 oz. steel one of four different Matryoshka doll cocktail vessels. ($50, eLitVodka.com) 6) The Anti-Cookbook will inspire…

So Lucky, by award-winning author Nicola Griffith, is a fascinatingly intense, semiautobiographical novel about a woman facing down her demons. The profoundly personal narrative reads much like a memoir, and readers can’t help but empathize with protagonist Mara Tagarelli. In the space of a single week, her wife leaves her and she is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. In the professional world, Mara is the head of a multimillion-dollar AIDS foundation (a career inspired by someone very close to her living with HIV) and in her personal life, she is a committed martial artist. But when her life is turned upside down overnight, Mara finds herself feeling completely lost and alone. She can’t rely on family, her body is letting her down, and friends and colleagues are distancing themselves, treating her…

The Advocate has published at least three generations of amazing writers (including Andrew Sullivan, Tony Kushner, Kate Clinton, Ryan Murphy, Janis Ian, Alison Bechdel, Michelangelo Signorile, and Janet Mock). Former colleagues and interviewees often go on to do great things. Here are some amazing new projects: Lonnie Lusardo, The Advocate’s Northwest correspondent during the mid-1980s, has released The Anatomy of Organized Hate: Stories of Former White Supremacists and America’s Struggle to Understand the Hate Movement, a monumental achievement that could change how we combat hate in America. Lusardo has created a careful inventory of the common types of hate crimes as well as the often myopic and misinformed motivations behind them. The personal stories are compelling, but Lusardo indicts the broader culture, a change in journalistic standards, and political leaders…

A new study indicates that racial and anti-LGBTQ bias is common among rideshare drivers. African-American and LGBTQ customers—as well as LGBTQ allies—are much more likely to be canceled on than white and straight people. The study, “When Transparency Fails: Bias and Financial Incentives in Ridesharing Platforms,” observed the habits of drivers and how riders are treated when they’re perceived as African-American, queer, or an LGBTQ ally. Study authors Chris Parker and Jorge Meija created fake passenger profiles with pictures of Black riders and names often perceived as Black, like Keisha and Jamal. They also created profiles that included a rainbow flag, connoting a rider was LGBTQ or an ally. Parker and Meija discovered the Black riders were canceled on nearly three times as often as white riders, while the LGBTQ…

Don’t let the funny videos fool you. Kalen Allen is deep. The 23-year-old media personality knows where he’s going, and he’s got a plan to get there. Since releasing the viral “Kalen Reacts” videos, where he gives colorful commentary on culinary preparations, Allen has skyrocketed to near-superstardom in only a few years. When Ellen DeGeneres had him on her show in 2018, the lesbian talk show host fell for the affable and witty Allen, and ended up inviting him to collaborate and produce content for her digital platforms. Today, Allen holds a regular guest spot on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and has a weekly digital news series, OMKalen, where he provides commentary on trending pop culture stories. He’s covered the red carpets at New York Fashion Week, the Met Gala,…

Afuchsia stuffed doll with a gap tooth, a blue one-eyed dog, a cat that speaks gibberish, and an otherwise seemingly perfect girl who hides her glasses in a pocket until her perfect doll friends aren’t looking—these are some of the inhabitants of Uglyville and Perfection in the 2019 kids’ movie UglyDolls. One place is a gleaming factory-esque city of lookalike dolls tailored to reflect an accepted aesthetic and behavior, and the other a village of rejects who embrace their differences without knowing they’ve been exiled for perceived imperfections. Musician, style icon, actress, and pansexual rule-breaker Janelle Monáe voiced Mandy, the otherwise perfect girl with glasses who stands up for the denizens of Uglyville in the film, which played in theaters in the summer and is now available on video. And…

Beloved lesbian author (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit) Jeanette Winterson’s latest novel Frankissstein is a retelling of both Mary Shelley’s classic monster tale Frankenstein and of its creation. Frankissstein bounces through time, paralleling a retelling of the moment Shelley brings her story to life in 1816 with a tale from a post-Brexit Britain in which a scientist attempts to reanimate human body parts. Winterson is also examining the creative process of writing and its similarities to the undertaking of Victor Frankenstein as he throws a switch and life surges into what was previously inanimate, stitched-together parts from various corpses. The author herself is grave-robbing here by reviving a 200-year-old horror story rather than crafting a wholly original tale. In Frankissstein, Shelley’s story gets away from her. It takes on…

Picture it: New York City, 1983. It was the dawn of the HIV epidemic in America, when love and loss were practically synonymous for those in the queer community. As the plague raged, killing tens of thousands of gay men in a matter of years, our government did virtually nothing to stop it. It was a time of lawlessness, a time of integration, and a time to revolt. Richie Jackson, then 17, had just started attending New York University, where he discovered there was a queer community. As the celebrated TV and theater producer (Nurse Jackie, Torch Song) notes in his new book Gay Like Me: A Father Writes to His Gay Son, “It was as if I’d joined a secret society, bound together by oppression, and we reveled in our…

It was an honor of a lifetime to help lead a global public relations project with the United Nations Foundation on behalf of the Nobel Peace Prizewinning United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The work occurred during the almost two-year run-up to the Paris Climate Treaty Accord that was triumphantly signed by nearly 200 countries in December of 2015. Part of our task was to help the nearly 800 unpaid UNIPCC climate scientists from around the world explain their groundbreaking Fifth Assessment Report, a thorough examination about the state of the Earth’s climate to the media and public prior to Paris. The UNIPCC, established in 1997, has so far prepared five massive reports since its inception to inform world leaders prior to global U.N. climate conventions. Before the Paris…

Photographer B. Proud’s exhibition “First Comes Love,” initiated before the Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling, helped change minds by featuring both celebrities and everyday LGBTQ couples who had been together for decades, documenting their love through photographs, stories, and videos. Selections were later collected in a book of the same name (see FirstComesLove.org or BProudPhoto.com). Proud premiered her latest take on the series, “First Comes Love 2: Transcending Love,” in November at the Stonewall National Museum and Archives in Wilton Manors, Fla., where it will run through February. This project, which launched two years ago, focuses on transgender and gender-nonconforming couples, and pictures them celebrating the beauty of their love and commitment for each other amid today’s divisive political climate. For the past 20 years, Proud (née Barbara Proud)…

While some previous Democratic candidates have courted the LGBTQ community, this election cycle is unprecedented in the sheer amount of attention so many front-runners in a major party have paid to our concerns. With 15 million potential queer votes on the line, top candidates are showing up to LGBTQ events including at The Advocate and Human Rights Campaign-sponsored LGBTQ Presidential Forums. In addition, six of the top 2020 Democratic hopefuls responded to an HIV-focused survey spearheaded by AIDS United, along with other members of the ACT Now: End AIDS Coalition (which includes GMHC, Positive Women’s Network-USA, Prevention Access Campaign, and the Transgender Law Center). Not surprisingly, many of the major candidates’ responses are similar. They all support the Equality Act, HIV funding, and returning the nation to a leadership role…

The murky and gothic world of Dark Shadows, a soap opera that originally aired on ABC from 1966 to 1971, featured a family plagued by ghoulish creatures of the night: ghosts, werewolves, zombies, witches, warlocks, and more. Barnabas Collins (played by Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s 2012 film adaptation of Dark Shadows) at first appears to be just another monster, a 175-year-old vampire driven by bloodlust and the memories of a lost love. But the bloodsucker undergoes a transformation, eventually reflecting very human qualities as he repeatedly risks his own existence to save others. Long before marriage equality ruled the land, movie monsters were ways for scriptwriters to bring euphemistic queer characters to life. Exiled to the underground and the fringes of culture, monsters (and queers) frightened mere mortals by…

Angry Queer Somali Boy: A Complicated Memoir details Mohamed Abdulkarim Ali’s journey from wartorn Africa to the West. Lost in a strange country (the Netherlands, then Canada) and culture, Ali found it difficult to assimilate. His sexuality was suddenly accepted but remained at odds with the cultural heritage of his family. Angry and alienated, Ali descended into drugs and alcohol. Somali Boy is interwoven with a contextual background of world history and sociopolitical commentary on both the East and West, from the vantage point of a gay Muslim immigrant. (New York University Press) —DONALD PADGETT Trans+: Love, Sex, Romance, and Being You by Karen Rayne and Kathryn Gonzales is a guidebook for trans and nonbinary teens published by the American Psychological Association. It covers coming out, transitioning, dealing with transphobia,…