First, a huge thank you for all of your submissions, and to everyone who helped spread the word about this carnival!

For those of you who may not have heard about the carnival before visiting this site today, the Carnival of Bent Attractions will be published monthly and is made up of submitted blog posts on articles of interest to the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, trans and queer communities.

And now, here are the posts that make your first Carnival of Bent Attractions:

A Publishing Company for FTM Literature is Born (and Named)

Homofactus Press, a publishing company dedicated to bringing readers FTM literature from around the world, was started earlier this year by Jay Sennet with plans to produce its first anthology, Self-Organizing Men, in 2006. First, learn the story behind the name “Homofactus Press.”

My Feminism and Your Feminism Aren’t Friends

Andrea Rubenstein of the Official Shrub.com Blog discusses transphobic actions of self-identified feminists in her post “Transphobia to the left of me, Anti-feminism to the right…” Are the tactics of transphobic feminists any different than those of radical feminists? What about when feminists hold anti-feminists values? Andrea says hate propaganda crosses the line and taints any feminism that my have existed before it. Read more here.

A Chat with Susan Stryker

Also submitted, the “Five Question” interview with Susan Stryker, co-author of Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area and former executive director of the GLBT Historical Society of Northern California, over at (en)Gender where Susan shares with us her belief that no two queer people define themselves the same way and her definition of queer: “valuing that which is off-center and against the norm.”

Issues of Choice

Andrew Israel Ross is interested in the “concern over the ability of gay people to argue for biological determinism as opposed to cultural construction of modern day homosexuality” and feels that the nurture argument is bad news for gay people. “The contemporary biology argument for the origins of homosexuality is simply another version of the late-nineteenth efforts by psychologists to explain ‘inversion’ and eventually ‘homosexuality’ as sexual deviation,” he claims. More here.

Meanwhile, over at Jay Sennet’s Blog, Jay opens up discussion on the feeling that it’s unacceptable within queer communities to say that one chose to change their sex or sexual orientation and the presumption that being trans is beyond one’s control.

Gay Marriage: I Do. I Don’t. I Don’t Know.

Dr. Chris of Creole Gumbo posted about the potential psychological impact of the passing of the Texas constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. “I can’t help but imagine what effects this will have on those gays and lesbians who live in and call Texas their home,” he says of the approval of the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Read his post on “minority stress”.

Big Queer Blog takes the issue of same-sex marriage in another direction and questions if queers should be fighting for the right to marry, or if we should be fighting for a society where married couples are not granted a privileged status instead. A taste of the full post: Gay marriage would create another privileged group (married lesbians and gay men); it would not help legitimize single parents, alternative families (foster and adoptive homes, siblings raising kids, or other more tribal arrangements), or even alternative relationships (masters/slaves, triples, polyamory). It would not help legitimize the lives of people who decide to remain single for their entire lives. Is it more privilege we want? Or is it universal acceptance of personal life choices?

Stereotypes and Discrimination

Austin Cline’s post “Using Stereotypes to Divide and Repress” over at About.com’s Agnosticism/Atheism Blog discusses the relationship between stereotypes and discrimination. He highlights how group stereotypes could further the cause of discrimination of a group by making that them an “other” group, and the impact that affect could have on the struggle for equal rights.

The Catholic Church

A post over at rhetorically speaking discusses possibilities of explaining the reason the Vatican speaks out against “gay culture” in Catholic seminaries. “The most likely reading [of the ‘so-called gay culture’ the Vatican is concerned with] is that this refers to seminaries which do not actively bar practicing homosexual candidates, or condemn the practice of homosexuality,” writes the author.

Issues of Race and the Gay Community

GayProf, the author of Center of Gravitas, is concerned that blackface minstrelsy will make a major comeback, and troubled that gay audiences, such as the mostly white gay male audience of the blackface drag shows of Charles Knipp (also known as Shirley Q. Liquor), enable such a comeback. From GayProf’s concluding paragraph: One of the greatest difficulties facing the queer community, it seems to me, is the chronic indifference of middle and upper class gays to these realities. For many individuals, the nation allows just enough flexibility for middle-class gays to enjoy a fairly comfortable life (myself included, btw). As a result, many of these middle-class gays ignore or, in Knipp’s case, mock the misfortune of others. We can’t take Knipp’s popularity lightly.

The Works of Jean-Frédéric Bazille

Head to Aman Yala for a discussion of some of the paintings of Jean-Frédéric Bazille, an impressionist painter known for his depiction of figures. If Bazille was erotically drawn to men, an assumption some have made from pictures such as the ones you will see at Aman Yala, Scène d’été and Pêcheur à l’épervier, remains unknown today.

Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser Syndrome and Gender Identity

We conclude the first edition of the Carnival of Bent Attractions with Lilith von Fraumench’s comments on Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser Syndrome, its parallels with and differences from transsexuality, and the importance in our society of being able to have “normal” sexual relations. Read more here.

I hope you enjoyed the links! The next Carnival of Bent Attractions takes place at Desperate Kingdoms on January 10, 2006.

*Note on submissions: If you submitted more than one submission from the same blog to the carnival during the first submissions cycle (which ended December 2nd at 12:01AM), one of the submissions was chosen for this carnival and the remaining submissions have been forwarded to the next host. Read more on the multiple submissions policy.

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