Category: Uncategorized

• December 17, 2015

  International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

  December 17th is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Pause a moment today to consider how the stigma against the women and men called whores and sluts endangers their lives, and the ways in which those everyday insults justify violence from police, partners, clients, strangers, and family members. International Day to End…
• December 8, 2015

  The fate of rust belt gay bars

  Nothing dramatizes the collapse of the Cleveland gay bar scene than this list of nominees for best gay bar from 2010. Seven of 10 have closed (n.b.: Bounce reopened): No new gay bars have opened between 2010 and 2015 that weren’t replacing an existing gay bar, so the failure of 7/10 isn’t a function of…
• December 7, 2015

  Most downloaded, now Free: The Modern Career of the Oldest Profession

  My article on metaphor theory and the history of the phrase “oldest profession” was the second “most downloaded” social science article for Palgrave in 2015. Now it’s FREE for everyone! I wrote about it here. I’m going to credit the bump from the ‘students’ of Hot Dog University, a collaboration between Belt Magazine and Happy…
• November 25, 2015

  Thanks aren’t enough for gay bars

  There’s a nice profile of the last gay bar in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, Aunt Charlie’s. I hadn’t realized their famous drag shows were only an invention of 1998, the beginning of the end for the Tenderloin. In 1999, I counted 13 bars in the greater Tenderloin/Polk Street corridor; there were 6 by 2004 and…
• November 24, 2015

  The Traffic in Deer

  Deer trafficking: another example of the spread of what I call trafficking talk, or the traffic in trafficking. Recent headlines include Two Florida Men Sentenced for Trafficking in Deer or Deer-Trafficking Scheme Nets Record $1.6 Million Fine Up until around 2010, news outlets usually called such crimes “smuggling,””poaching,” “illegal sales” or “illegal transport” (the earliest…
• November 4, 2015

  Article: Style and the Value of Gay Nightlife: Homonormative Placemaking in San Francisco

  Another of my journal articles on San Francisco gay bars appears in the current edition of Urban Studies. My very simple point is not all gay neighborhoods are (or were) the same. The point was so simple it languished in 4 journals for 7 years, going through 9 revisions. But now it’s out – complete…