My (highly attenuated) attention was recently directed to an LWT doc from 1981 available on YouTube . It compares the pre-war, pre-gay world of ‘sisters’ (‘musical’ friends you didn’t want to fuck) and ‘trade’ (‘normal’ working class ‘real’ men you really did), with the post-Stonewall, butched-up, Marlborough Man world of… Read More »Back to the Future: Escaping Sexology
Mark Simpson snaps on the latex gloves and gives men’s prostates a thorough probing ‘Movember’ is upon us again, and so are the ironic and perhaps not so ironic upper lip pubes, reminding us of the important, worthy – and until recently overlooked – issue of prostate cancer. A disease which… Read More »How The Prostate Came Out of the Closet
‘Men brought up with women are less sexy’ Announced the headline in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, the UK’s last daily broadsheet. A headline which has, unsurprisingly, helped to make it the second most popular story on their website. A headline which provokes a number of intriguing questions. Questions such as: Men… Read More »The Celebrity Sex Lives of Rats
by Mark Simpson (A shorter version originally appeared on Guardian CIF November 2, 2008) “It’s better to marry than burn with passion,” declared St Paul. But now marriage itself seems to have become a burning issue – or at least, gay marriage. The re-banning of gay marriage in California earlier… Read More »Let’s Be Civil: Gay Marriage Isn’t The End of the Rainbow
Achilles, Alexander, Jason, Odysseus – the fabulous scrapping, rutting warriors of the Ancient World fulfil every boy’s own fantasy. Now, says Mark Simpson, Oliver Stone’s Alexander and the recent crop of ‘epics’ confirms that Hollywood has abolished heroes – past and present. (Originally appeared Independent on Sunday, 19 December 2004)… Read More »Epic Illusions and Metrowarriors