14 Posts

Blake Smith

Blake Smith is a historian, translator and co-host of the 'Off Christopher Street' podcast. He has written many essays on the Christopher Street scene in Tablet, The Hedgehog Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and elsewhere.

David Sessions ⸱ Blake Smith

When Gay Self-Help Wasn't Slop

The best gay self-help book of all time was a sex manual, a literary experiment, and a rousing text of gay liberation.
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Podcast ⸱ David Sessions ⸱ Blake Smith

Gay Power, Gay Myth: Harvey Milk and Randy Shilts

The legend of Harvey Milk and the gay journalist who made it.
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Podcast ⸱ David Sessions ⸱ Blake Smith

Where Have All the Gay Writers Gone?

The state of gay male media and intellectual life.
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Podcast ⸱ David Sessions ⸱ Blake Smith

The Best Gay Novel of All Time

Re-reading Andrew Holleran's classic novel 'Dancer from the Dance.'
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Podcast ⸱ David Sessions ⸱ Blake Smith

The Cut and the Uncut

The politics and erotics of circumcision.
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Podcast ⸱ David Sessions ⸱ Blake Smith

Are Straight Women Gay Men?

Why it's gay to think about straight women.
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Podcast ⸱ David Sessions ⸱ Blake Smith

What is Pride For?

Pride is a standing communal ritual capacious enough for our ambivalence.
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Podcast ⸱ David Sessions ⸱ Blake Smith

When Gay Men Reinvented Love

Christopher Street's "Anatomy of a Love Affair" in the age of sad gay dating slop.
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Podcast ⸱ David Sessions ⸱ Blake Smith

Why the Gays Tried to Cancel 'Cruising'

'Christopher Street' editor Charles Ortleb saw the film as an opportunity to forge a gay "people" in the shadow of a looming fascism.
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Podcast ⸱ David Sessions ⸱ Blake Smith

What's So Casual About Casual Sex?

From Andrew Holleran's "fast-food sex" to today's Grindr angst, the gays have always been fretting about their own promiscuity.
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Podcast ⸱ David Sessions ⸱ Blake Smith

Gay Masculinity and Its Discontents

Critics saw 1970s "gay macho" as an abandonment of feminism for male privilege and heteronormativity. But they missed the emergence of a new, distinctively gay culture.
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