YEE-ha! There are about a zillion things to catch up on re: this action-packed year. Susie Bright (up blogging all night, I’m sure) did a Top Ten Stories of 2006 – zowie, I have not had enough coffee for the overview stuff, but I do have some things I’ve been trying to get to all fall. Here goes.

(BTW, if you are reading this before the first week of January 2007, this entry will not have any live links in it, ‘cuz I am a *Luddite blogger* and my whipsmart colleague Jez Lee actually makes all those wonders-of-technology happen. So maybe you want to check back later to look for the highlighting. You’ll learn much more about all this stuff.)

Oh, and speaking of round-ups, I just want to free-associate to two of these: my old friend from the Lusty Lady (and Taste of Latex ur-sexzine fame) Lily Burana has a new book out, a novel about falling in love with a bull rider in Wyoming. This will expand your already-conflicting views of Wyoming greatly, I know (what do you think of now? Dick Cheney and Matthew Shepard, right? And NO state ought to have to be burdened with these as our first free-association links). Lil’s book is called *Try*, and I liked it, though it’s such a trip to *know* a novelist and think, wow, this all came right outta my pal’s head?

Round-Up, free-association 2: Kudos to Brokeback Mountain, which I *finally* saw Friday — is it possible we had had this important movie Tivoed for, like, months? It *is* possible, because I did not have the strength to watch it. I have been watching queer movies where someone gets — watch out, plot-buster here, skip to the next section now if you haven’t seen it — beaten to death for maybe 35 years now, and you know what? I’m really fundamentally tired of it, so tired that I confess that I have not yet even brought myself to watch Boys Don’t Cry AT ALL. Why? Because I know how it ends, people, and I do not feel I need to be reminded of gender-and-orientation-based murderation on a regular cinematic basis. But some people, you see, *do* need this, so the genius of Brokeback Mountain is to remind people, at a moment when gay marriage is still so fraught a topic, why splitting up couples like Ennis and Jack is not going to save hetero marriage. Kudos, as I say, to the best Queeers-for-Straight-People movie I’ve seen lately. (The best Queers-for-Queers — Short Bus – I’ll get to another time.)

Oh, and the sheep scenes in Brokeback? Very believable, as were the ’60s and ’70s-era rednecks. I grew up with people (and sheep — my dad fancied himself a rancher) like that. For that matter, I expect I grew up with guys like Jack and Ennis.

Free-associating further, if you like these real butch sheep-and-mountain types, you’ll love the Long Tom Grange calendar of these guys… naked! I grew up right around there, outside of Cheshire, Oregon, and I believe my folks attended the next grange over. What’s a grange, you might ask? Well, it’s where you go for potlucks, silly! Before there were enough out lesbians to invite you over to one of theirs. But granges were also, I understand, one feature of the Progressive Movement in the late nineteenth century. They were organizing entities and service providers for farmers and other rural folk. I don’t know what my folks did there, though it’s a sure bet my dad told stories and monopolized the conversation. Tell you what, let’s all google this, so we can start our New Year knowing more about American history than we did before. But whether or not you have the strength for that, check out the cutest old coots you ever saw at www.grangecalendar.com — it’s just a real pity my dad is dead and can’t pose for next year’s version.

Chuck Cook, who is just as fun as he looks in this picture! Long Tom Grange Calendar, used by permission.

WOMEN TALKING
What else? Well, I mentioned a book a couple of months back whilst busy getting Carol Gilligan and Deborah Tannen mixed up (this was my first public instance of encroaching senility, so I hope you all enjoyed it). The book is *Lip Service: The Truth About Women’s Darker Side in Love, Sex, and Friendship* by Toronto author and Journalist Kate Fillion (Harper Collins, 1996 — I read it a few years ago). Really interesting riff on ’70s and ’80s cultural feminism, particularly the notion that woman are morally superior in the realms of communication and relationship. I don’t know how the feminist cadre from the old days took Fillion’s book, but I found it fascinating, and a great tool for those who want women to really be *equal* — with all the complexity and diversity that implies.

Gilligan, by the way, a professor at NYU, took on Focus on the Family’s James Dobson this fall because he misrepresented (she said “distorted”) her work in writing in Time Magazine about Mary Cheney’s pregnancy, a blessed event that, coming so near to Christmas, you’d think the guy would have embraced. Dick Cheney’s grandbaby — wouldn’t you think they’d try to spin this as the Second Coming? But apparently not. For more about Gilligan’s righteous indignation, see http://www.truthwinsout.org/ and, for a YouTube video version, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NHdSVknB5Q

DEAD WHITE MALE SEXOLOGISTS AND SEX ACTIVISTS
We lost four big guys this year, and were very sorry to see three of them go.

Eric Rofes, with whom I served on the board of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation until his death in June, was a really important voice in the gay men’s community and the academic world as well; he came onto the scene with his book *I Thought People Like That Killed Themselves*, about queers and suicide, and lately he had focused on issues like the sexual repression of gay men that came hand in hand with the AIDS epidemic. Rofes, who was not very much older than me, died of a heart attack at his summer place in Provincetown.

Fritz Klein helped us learn a lot of what we know about bisexuality. One of the first bi organizers and researchers in the country, his importance to the bisexual community can’t possibly be overstated; among other things he founded the academic Journal of Bisexuality, on whose editorial board I serve. I use his Klein Scale (a riff and development of Kinsey’s more famous scale) just about every time I go out to teach, especially talking about sexual orientation diversity and “pomosexuality.” In later years Klein, who had relocated to San Diego and was an important part of its wonderful bi comunity, developed a foundation to support new bisexual research and community projects. The Center for Sex & Culture got an early loan from Fritz that helped us put on one of the opening parties Bi and For the People at San Francisco’s LGBT Center, a couple of years before our own center opened its doors.

Vern Bullough, probably the single most prolific and important academic sexologist of our times, died this summer after a career that spanned forty-plus years of focus on diverse and often historically understudied sexual issues. When I say “historic,” I mean exactly that: Bullough gave us more information about sex (and sex roles) in the Middle Ages than anyone but him knew could be found. And he was a truly committed and curious academic: when he began to study nursing from an academic perspective he figured he’d understand better which questions to ask if he became a nurse… so he went to nursing school on the side! Bullough’s memorial service, held in September in LA, made me understand what a giant of a man Vern was, with interests and activities that ran the gamut from his sex research to fair housing and humanism. His family graciously donated some of his books to the Center for Sex & Culture; after they’ve been catalogued this spring, they’ll be available to readers and researchers in our library. Thanks especially to Jim Bullough-Latsch, who did the yeoman’s share of getting these volumes to us.
Here’s more about Vern Bullough:
http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=987
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/03/us/03bullough.html ex=1158120000&en=3cbb6746cd3a8ed4&ei=5070
http://www.vernbullough.com/bullough/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vern_Bullough
http://www.buffalo.edu/reporter/vol37/vol37n40/columns/Obituaries.html
http://www.aclu-sc.org/News/OpenForum/101947/101959/
http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/Entrance_Page/About_Us/Advisory_Board/advisory_board.htm
http://www.iheu.org/node/2297
https://secure.aahn.org/obituaries.html
http://sexualidad.wordpress.com/2006/07/04/vern-bullough/
http://www.alumni.utah.edu/u-news/august06/memoriam.htm
http://library.csun.edu/Collections/SCA/SC/bullough.html

And then there’s John Money, sexologist emeritus from Johns Hopkins. Once the lion of his field, his star had waned seriously before he died, mainly because Money’s ethics and theories had been called into question by a book, *As Nature Made Him*, which chronicled the story of David Reimer, born a twin named Bruce and transformed, through Money’s influence, into a little girl named Brenda when a circumcision accident destroyed little Bruce’s penis. Since Bruce/Brenda had a twin, Brian, the situation was a perfect way to study Money’s theories about the malleability and social construction of gender. But Brenda’s young life didn’t actually prove Money’s theories — on the contrary, as soon as she found out what had happened to her she resumed a male identity. David Reimer committed suicide a couple of years ago; I wrote an obituary for him.

All these men’s work are evidence that sex and gender research are important. And Money’s example — illustrated starkly by Reimer’s life story — reminds us that all this has real effects on the lives of real people. Mostly those effects are positive: we all learn more about erotic desire, physiological functioning, and all the other moving parts of what we rather limitedly call “sexuality,” and individuals are empowered through information and greater public acceptance. But Money’s career shows us why research institutions now have strict “human subject committees” that restrict researchers’ abilities to experiment on, and interferre in the lives of, the people they examine.

The other moral of the David Reimer story? Circumcision is a much bigger deal than the circumcision docs want to admit. More on that another time, since circumcision and HIV have been back in the news this month.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some New Year’s thoughts and to play the blog game, for which Greta Christina tagged me last week. Stay safe tonight, and remember where the clitoris is, if there’s one in the room with you!

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