I'll let a female member of have the last word. Why is it so easy for society to wink at a straight man's taste for sapphic action, yet find the notion of a woman following her boiz down the yellow brick road bizarre? Pourquoi, s'il vous plait? What's not to like? As "QaF" fan Morgaine Swann writes on, " 'Queer as Folk' may be about gay characters, but those characters are played by some of the most beautiful actors and actresses, both gay and straight, that you've ever seen." "QaF," she concludes, is "full-frontal 'Friends' with better-looking, more talented actors." There you have it. On a lighter note, there's this: beautiful men, hot sex, romantic entanglements, pedestrian scripts. version of "Queer as Folk" (which I will always think of as "Queer as F - "). But the dynamic is different when participants share a sexual and cultural history. Yeah, these guys will play dominant/submissive or butch/femme or adopt stereotypical male/female roles.
#PICTURES OF GAY MEN FUCKING FREE#
That said, I will make one observation: Whatever its other attractions, boy-on-boy (or girl-on-girl) romance lets straight women tourist in relationships largely free of the sexism that infiltrates hetero-based sitcoms. Maybe I'm playing Pollyanna here, but why should female voyeurs who enjoy watching gay men demand more examination than men who like watching lesbians? Is it any less a horny spectator sport? All kinks have their back stories, but not all back stories are worth exploring. At the same time, I wonder why it fascinates us so. The topic of a straight woman "queering" herself - or "Othering" herself - by exhibiting desire outside mainstream gender codes is worth exploring, and Shiller's exegesis is a good one. "The object she desires says something about her own sexual play and sexual orientation." "Juggling the object-of-desire's ambiguous sexuality is part of the straight fan's own gender performance," she writes.
She concedes that "hot male bodies in action are a big part of the draw," but maintains there's more to this "female gaze" than meets the eye. What intrigues Shiller is the gender-bending identification that leads straight women to bond with the love lives of overtly gay male characters (some of whom are played by straight men, which adds yet another layer to the conundrum). Note: “McInturff, Steve Book, Delaware O.It isn't news - at least in the circles I travel in - that men aren't the only ones who enjoy the visual aspects of the mating game. Photo strip, undated, 35 x 27 mm, provenance: US, (image courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell Collection © “Loving” by 5 Continents Editions) Photograph, 1951, 121 x 83 mm, note: “1951” “Davis & J.C.” (image courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell Collection © “Loving” by 5 Continents Editions) Photograph, Undated, 96 x 67 mm (image courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell Collection © “Loving” by 5 Continents Editions) Cabinet card, circa 1880, 167 x 109 mm, provenance: US, The book, Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s-1950s (5 Continents Editions), is available online. When we see them as connected, we feel more whole, and that’s what love is about for many of us anyway.
Seeing ourselves in the past is as much about being certain of our present and, dare I say, our future.
What do images of men in love during a time when it was illegal tell us? What are we looking for in the faces of these people who dared to challenge the mores of their time to seek solace together? Flipping through the book, it wasn’t that I felt that I learned a great deal about being LGBTQ, but what gave me comfort was the feeling that we’re not going anywhere. While the majority of the images hail from the United States and are of predominantly white men, there are images from Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Japan, Latvia, and the United Kingdom among the cache.
The collection belongs to Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell, a married couple who has accumulated over 2,800 photographs of “men in love” during the course of two decades. In Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s–1950s, hundreds of images tell the story of love and affection between men, with some clearly in love and others hinting at more than just friendship. Hunter” (image courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell Collection © “Loving” by 5 Continents Editions)Ī beautiful group of photographs that spans a century (1850–1950) is part of a new book that offers a visual glimpse of what life may have been like for those men, who went against the law to find love in one another’s arms. Postcard, circa 1910, 90 x 141 mm, note on front: “E.