TONIGHT! I will be reading journal excerpts from my first year in the US Navy as a gay man during Don’t Ask Don’t Tell - Including a play by play of how I lost my V-card with a fellow sailor. Come enjoy the show!
Making Out with Wes Perry and Friends
Wednesday February 20th at 8pm
The Upstairs Gallery in Andersonville
5219 N Clark St
FREE and BYOB! ($5 suggested donation)
198/365
December 22, 2010
Today, more than any other day,
I am proud to be serving in the US Armed Forces.
Rota, Spain
Camera: Polaroid SX-70
Film: Polaroid SX-70 Time Zero
(3/10 from my next-to-last box of last stock TZ film)
Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?
Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform
Gay culture has become a nightmare of consumerism, whether it’s an endless quest for Absolut vodka, Diesel jeans, rainbow Hummers, pec implants, or Pottery Barn. Whatever happened to sexual flamboyance and gender liberation, an end to marriage, the military, and the nuclear family? As backrooms are shut down to make way for wedding vows, and gay sexual culture morphs into “straight-acting dudes hangin’ out,” what are the possibilities for a defiant faggotry that challenges the assimilationist norms of a corporate-cozy lifestyle?
Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? challenges not just the violence of straight homophobia but the hypocrisy of mainstream gay norms that say the only way to stay safe is to act straight: get married, join the military, adopt kids! Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore reinvokes the anger, flamboyance, and subversion once thriving in gay subcultures in order to create something dangerous and lovely: an exploration of the perils of assimilation; a call for accountability; a vision for change. A sassy and splintering emergency intervention!About the editor:
Called “startlingly bold and provocative” by Howard Zinn, and described as “a cross between Tinkerbell and a honky Malcolm X with a queer agenda” by The Austin Chronicle, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is undoubtedly one of America’s most outspoken queer critics. She is the author of two novels, including, most recently, So Many Ways to Sleep Badly, and is the editor of four nonfiction anthologies, including Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity and That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation.
ummm, fuck. that’s hot.
damn homo-normativity. I know it’s a somewhat new image I’m being fed, that beard/hair is attractive, and it’s just as pervasive an idealized image as all others (“skinny/white/muscular is beautiful”) but maybe it’s more accessible for people?
I don’t know, it’s complicated. It’s hard do delineate where mass media-enforced beauty standards end and where one’s own preferences begin. Maybe there should not even be personal preferences, but an equal adoration for all sizes/shapes/bodies/hair?
Perhaps I’ve analyzed this set of images enough that I don’t even find it attractive anymore.
Damn over-analysis. You ruin everything.
(Source: erotic-co)
Cheryl Cole - “Ghetto Baby”
This is problematic as FUUUUUUUCK.
Happy Holigays from Kiam Marcelo Junio and Jerry Blossom!
Art is a circle jerk.
Which is fun. And I’m in it, and I enjoy the fact that I both benefit and take from it. And to many it may seem frivolous and in excess, that there are more important things to do than make art, or to keep with the metaphor, better and more productive ways to have sex.
People often criticize artists for creating work that only other artists understand (circle jerk), producing products for the consumption of the circles that support the institution, completely removed from the rest of society. In many senses, it’s correct. One must be invited to a circle jerk, or an event with a circle jerk. One does not normally meet a group at a bar and decide, “hey, you know what would be fun, we should have a circle jerk.” There normally involves planning, and selecting which friends will be participating. So circle jerks are often elite institutions, but this does not preclude that it is the only way for them to happen. Art, after all, is not made in a vacuum. People’s personal “real world” experiences and tastes will always influence their art, and therefore, the circle jerk. The world that exists outside of art, and the people outside of the circle jerk, will still see, influence, and benefit from the event.
Circle jerks, and therefore, art, are important means of communication, and provide a vital role creation of cultural capital. Circle jerks negotiate boundaries between parties, seeking to provide equal voices and honor one another’s presence through the giving and receiving of pleasure, or in the art sense, the provision of pleasure to the viewer, on whom the artist depends for survival. Whether for simply aesthetic, or profound purposes pertinent to the human condition, art, and therefore, circle jerks, are essential developments in the human experience.
(Source: vintagegaymen)
Actions for an Asian Immigrant
performance, 45 min. duration
Kiam Marcelo Junio, 2012
Sexy, Masculine, Asian hotties - something American mass media doesn’t ever show.
What is perpetuated instead? The image of the Asian male as a clown, comic relief, smart/wise but non-sexual, non-threatening, safe, weak, small penis, etc.
Lost’s Daniel Dae Kim and Naveen Andrews are probably the only exception.
Mister Junior, the queen of Boylesque
by IAMKIAM Photography, 2012Connect with Mister Junior
This is how I connect with you, in hidden spaces
between trees
bathroom stalls
fucking in the hot musky fog
are only a few feet away, with a few minutes to spare
enough to put my cock in your mouth
We connect through coded glances
1, 2, 3 seconds, and you’ll let me buy you a drink now
And then and forever shall be
world without end
I connect with you over fantasies of other men.
measuring my worth against theirs
replacing you with another body
replacing me with another cock
another set of lips
another round and ready ass
To conquer
We connect over things that should have been
But it’s always been
simply you and me
and other men
connecting.
From Butch Wonders:
As a butch who has great respect for trans men but no desire to be one, I have a few answers to the “why aren’t all butches trans” question.
- First, gender is culturally imposed. The idea that men should wear ties and women should wear dresses is not biologically embedded in our brains. If a woman wants to sample/use/enjoy “male” culture, why would this necessarily indicate that she would also want facial hair and a penis? To me, the two feel totally separate.
- “Genderqueer” means different things to different people. But I most often hear it defined as existing outside the gender binary—someone who sees themselves as neither male, nor female.
- “Genderqueer” is a fashionable thing to be right now. But you need not identify as genderqueer just because you are a butchy dyke, or a cross-dressing man, or a transwoman, or anything else. You can be a man in a dress who completely identifies as a man, or a woman in a tie who completely identifies as a woman. Personally, I am not genderqueer. I look rather butch/androgynous, but I completely identify as female. Just because a woman has short hair, or binds her breasts, or wears a tie, does not mean she is automatically “genderqueer.”
(more at the link)
The Genderbread Person (version 2)
“Gender is one of those things everyone thinks they understand, but most people don’t. Gender isn’t binary. It’s not either/or. In many cases it’s both/and. A bit of this, a dash of that. This tasty little guide is meant to be an appetizer for understanding.”
UGH. Heteronormativity
Where do I even start? I am so sick of fucking binaries and expectations on how people are supposed to act, based on their genitals.
UGH. White heterosexual males/frat bros
Advertisers just love to continue perpetuating this image, and so people think it’s ok, and even desirable to act like a buffoon. “BOOM!” Wow. Gag.
UGH. Sexism
How the hell is it still OK for Hooters to do shit like this? Granted, I’m pro-sex workers rights, and people’s ability to do with their bodies as they please, so the problem here is not the individuals but rather the system that perpetuates these attitudes about women, and in turn, about men, and furthermore, everyone else who doesn’t fit into these disgusting and false images.
UGH. Body-shaming and Ageism
Why are certain bodies inherently bad? Why is it wrong to gain cellulite, or grow old? Fuck you, Hooters.
Why is Hooters still in business?
From Jezebel:
Okay, I know it’s like the most obvious uptight-feminist cliche ever, but god, I hate Hooters. I fucking hate Hooters so much. Mainly because I like to eat things that actually taste good, and also because I dislike being reminded that a lot of people’s ideal woman is a pliant sex mannequin who delivers fried foods…
From commenter I Still Dream:
Good god no (and I will never go to Hooters as long as I live). While the *goal* of misogynist, patriarchal media is of course to demonize and commodity women, it also has some fairly ugly things to say about men—at least all men who don’t fit into their convenient little box. If you’re a man who’s an intellectual, or an artist, or you do theater, or you like to cook, you’re denigrated for being feminine. If you’re shy, or contemplative, or dare to express the slightest feeling of vulnerability or tenderness, then you’re denigrated for being a “pansy.” If you’re not interested in accumulating wealth then you’re a loser, and if you’re more interested in getting to know women than getting them drunk, you’re an emasculated prude. The MRA’s are psychos, but we DO need a men’s liberation in this country—a liberation from the patriarchal culture that teaches boys that being anything but a grunting, sexually aggressive predator is unacceptable.
Jerry Blossom will be appearing at the Defibrillator (1136 N Milwaukee) for Kokorokoko’s Video Girls, a burlesque and performance night celebrating the girls of 1980’s music videos.
Wednesday, August 8
Doors at 8/ Show at 9
Jerry Blossom is the performance and burlesque alter-ego of artist Kiam Marcelo Junio. Jerry stars in Kiam’s ongoing series Model Minority, which explores tensions and interactions of racial and gender identities, specifically between Asian, American, Filipino culture, and in dialogue with contemporary queer and body politics.
About Jerry Blossom:
Jerry Blossom is an Asian person of ambiguous descent. He is often seen wearing a blonde wig, and uses foundation that’s at least 3 shades lighter than his natural skin tone. Outwardly, he seems to be desperately trying to fit in to a Western ideal image of blonde hair and fair skin, and yet he does so critically and consciously. He is not “playing whiteface” or acting as or pretending to be, a white person, but rather, embodying (or failing to embody) the standards of global whiteness.
Jerry is a social chameleon, able to ingratiate himself in the favor of people from varied personalities, gender ambiguities, and social classes. By changing his personality with each encounter, however, “the real Jerry Blossom” remains a mystery.
Jerry is also an entertainer and somewhat of a celebrity in Southeast Asia, and is the current face of Eskinol, a skin lightening facial cleanser popular in the Philippines.
(Taken with Instagram)
Every Monday, artists of all types descend upon Beauty Bar to bring to life works that defy traditional genres, from dance pieces crafted in basements to puppet shows put together in attics to stories written on the CTA to the side projects of local legends. Conceived and curated by Jane Beachy, SALONATHON strives to support the creation of new, emerging and underground art in Chicago and beyond.
Kiam Marcelo Junio is a multimedia artist working in photography, video, sculpture, and performance art. Kiam served seven years in the US Navy and a registered Yoga teacher. He is currently studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Kiam was born in the Philippines and has lived in the US, Japan, and Spain. He speaks English, Tagalog, and Spanish.
