ESTEEMED EDITORS: The usage of humor and dry irony in this year's Queer Issue ["Enough About Me. Let's Talk About You. What Do You Think of Me?" edited by Dan Savage, June 21] seems like a good idea in theory, but your finished product was as ineffective as an overly garish pride parade. I already know what straight people think of us. I also understand that there is a gamut of emotions when it comes to the issue of homosexuality. But to see such hurtful opinions in the paper from which I have learned so much, I felt hated--not just by anti-gay preachers, but by heterosexual writers with gay friends.
Lev Stone, via e-mail
DEAR STRANGER: Congratulations on your recent gay issue of The Stranger. I have been enjoying your gay issues of The Stranger since 1991.
I await your next straight issue of The Stranger. I have been waiting for a straight issue of The Stranger since 1991.
Kerim Aydin, via e-mail
EDITORS: What Min Liao obviously doesn't understand is that there is a big difference between a business run for lesbians, like the Wildrose, and a business run by a lesbian for anybody ["Lesbian Bathhouse"]. The Hothouse is and always has been a day spa for women. Period. We are not there to cruise but to soak. I felt that eventually her article said that, in a left-handed way. But those who only read the first paragraph of the story--and anyone who has ever studied journalism knows that is what most people will read--will get a very different idea.
Que Areste, N.D., via e-mail
EDITOR: Several of your articles served as succinct reminders that, just like all communities, we, too, have a nasty underbelly. Be it Club Seattle, HIV, or our plethora of psychological issues scary enough to make Ann Landers join a convent, opening our issues and ourselves to criticism and insight from the larger community has much potential.
Julius Schorzman, Seattle
DEAR EDITORS: Sean Nelson's sensationally ignorant essay on AIDS/HIV ["Straight Man's Burden"] is this year's "winner." Nelson bases his ignorant [thoughts] on his own insulated experiences, and those of his other white, middle-class, heterosexual friends. And there's the problem. While Nelson acknowledges that AIDS/HIV is a plague in Africa, he is apparently clueless to the fact that in these United States, the fastest-growing populations of HIV-infected people are HETEROSEXUAL women and men of color. Yes, those pesky African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans don't seem to enter into Nelson's shoddy analysis.
Deran Ludd, via e-mail
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A G-THANG
DEAR KATHLEEN WILSON: Regarding "You Are Not a Girl": (1) Lighten up. (2) It's a gay thang; you wouldn't understand. (3) Gay men don't need a period to be neurotic and moody, and not all women are like you, and get uptight and crazy every month. (4) Which is more degrading to women? A gay man calling his friend "girl," or a straight man calling his buddy a "pussy"?
Sue, via e-mail
DEAR EDITORS: So you gave the pens to heterosexual people and asked them to write about gays. Interesting concept, with great potential for dialogue. So why do you push passages on lesbians to the bottom of the page, if not toward the end of the section? Why are almost ALL of the pictures depicted in this issue of your sample group of white, gay men?!
Jeanne Timmons, Seattle
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SCANDALOUS SUPPORT
EDITORS: Hats off to The Stranger for giving space to someone who is willing to say what many of us are never allowed to: Adolescent boys are one of God's most beautiful creations ["NAMBLA-Riffic!" Astrid Jackson]. Jackson is right in pointing out the double standard that exists--women can say things like this and elicit nothing more than giggles, whereas when a man even hints at such a thing, he is a likely candidate for lynching.
"Bridge," via e-mail
EDITORS: Josh Feit thinks the struggle for gay rights is "civil rights lite" ["You Go, Gays"]. But like civil rights, homophobia has also been a river of blood, of people dead, destroyed, and diminished to enforce conformity.
It is interesting that Josh [identifies] the gay civil rights movement through the years 1969-1995. Was 1995 the moment of victory? When it became safe to be gay--to "fuck who you want to"? Matthew Shepard, 1998. Think about it.
Lisa Daugaard, Seattle
DEAR EDITOR: I want to tell you how much I enjoyed Josh Feit's parody, "You Go Gays." At first I was enraged by the piece's historical ignorance ("Historically, gay men and lesbians have been members of the upper class"); political naiveté ("All that gay men and lesbians had to overcome was a couple of toss-offs in the Bible and the squeamishness of straight people); and self-serving, mercenary attitude ("I'm never going to win a Pulitzer Prize for gay rights reporting"). But then I realized how you guys like irony. Feit's article just has to be a parody, I told myself. No one could possibly be so lacking in social consciousness and political awareness. How silly of me to believe that you would publish an article by someone who actually argues that gay rights are just about "letting people fuck who they want to." You got me.
David Hennessee, Seattle
JOSH FEIT: "Had I become a muckraking journalist to make the world safe for queers to have orgasms in peace?" Having an orgasm in peace isn't our issue, Josh. Being able to walk the streets at night (and day) or being honest about who we are without being discriminated against in our jobs, families, and daily lives (and without being killed for it) is why we need muckraking journalists.
"Kirby," Seattle
EDITORS: Josh Feit is among many people who make the mistake of [creating a hierarchy] within oppression. Bickering over who's had it worse is divisive and a waste of time.
Feit's "evidence" that gay people haven't had it as hard as African Americans is dubious. Perhaps Feit made a mistake when he said that "Historically, gay men and lesbians have been members of the upper classes," but this is obviously ludicrous. Sexuality crosses class lines, and, as with most issues, poor folks have it harder. Professional gay men spending their disposable incomes in West Hollywood have a lot more autonomy than kids living the Boys Don't Cry life in working-class rural America.
Cheryl Klein, via e-mail
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SOFT OPRESSION
DEAR EDITOR: I write to express my disappointment in Josh Feit's article. What if gays don't "compare" to African Americans or Jews with historically empirical suffering? On your civil rights justification tote board, gays lose.
Your "status report" just ignores the substantive goals of the movement, like parenting, identity, marriage, violence, freedom of expression, the works. To say "the gay rights movement, on the other hand, doesn't really have an economic component" is just flat-out fucking wrong. Even the whitest, [most] middle-class, Banana-Republic-wearing, clubbing gym clones realize the economic implications of, say, gay marriage. Not about economics? Read the list of over 350 benefits given to married couples in Vermont that were not given to same-sex couples.
But it's not just economics, either. The economic protections of the 1964 Civil Rights Act didn't end racism, did it? We're in the era of more subtle forms of oppression, forms that [affect] freedom of identity, choice, and government sanction of difference. I would like to think that the gay and lesbian experience, and its greater visibility in the mainstream, has contributed to this discussion. I'm just disappointed The Stranger needs to be convinced of that, outside of club music, boy worship, and fashion.
Lee Gregory, Queens, New York
HELLO: There is absolutely nothing "cheesy" about foreskin restoration ["Reject!" Dan Savage and David Schmader, illustrated by Kathryn Rathke]. Your satirical drawings and commentary are very damaging to the genital integrity movement, and to the millions and millions of men who were tortured at birth and do not have whole, complete bodies.
Your comments are disparaging, ignorant of the routine torture and abuse of males, and assist in perpetuating the tenacious and traditional myth that a mutilated penis is great for everyone.
