Decanting

During the AIDS epidemic, prior to the antiviral cocktails, I learned quickly to loathe the both-Party-oriented gay politicos who only cared about two agenda items, gay marriage and gays in the military.  But decades later, the actual likelihood as well as the subversive potential of both agendas has emerged.

This does make me realize the power of a critical mass of PFLAGS realizing the gay thing doesn't have to crush their mainstream dreams if society would just get over it too:

 WA state shakes.

Social change always moves in interesting ways.  That's the thing I'm noticing in reading old 80s and 90s political and social theory tracts.  I'm also noticing what so quickly gets forgotten, all the extreme acts of people being a&&hats in the moment.  The accounts of public meetings in the 1990s attempts to get a NY gay rights bill in Sarah Schulman's My American History, whew.  Flashbacks.

Punk economics

Quote of the day:  "Slavoj Zizek reads Hegel in order to argue that demanding purity- for example, cultural productions or expressions totally free from commodification- is akin to ' positing the presuppositions' that will prevent one from having to act."

-quoted in Punk Productions: Unfinished Business, Stacy Thompson, SUNY Press, 2004, so far quite interesting.

This may seem apposite to the current flow of constant accommodations and compromises, but I'm researching the 80s and 90s subcultures and their socio-political analyses and practices.  It's right on point.

1927

"It is said that little girls want the same thrill in their reading that is so persistently sought among adolescent gang boys - 'tales of blood and thunder, detective stories, and mystery yarns.' This seems to show that boys and girls are much more alike than the traditional social patterns would indicate."

-Frederic M. Thrasher, The Gang, U. Chicago Press, 1927/1936

We need sociologists to tell us this?