--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> Sontag's discussion of illness as metaphor (_Illness as Metaphor_,
> 1977) -- some diseases get romanticized, some are regarded as
> punishments for bad personalities of patients or their mothers,
> others become metaphors of absolute evil, modern political
> discourses
> across the ideological spectrum tend to designate their targets as
> cancer and incite violence against them, such metaphoric uses of
> illness make it difficult to treat illnesses as they are -- was
> politically useful for queer activists even before she authored her
>
> own book on AIDS and its metaphors.
>
> Sontag was also one of the first major writers who addressed the
> AIDS
> crisis in a story published in a mainstream magazine: "The Way We
> Live Now" (1986).
Exactly. (Yoshie I really think you should send your comments to the houstonvoice editor.) I find this article annoying. To suggest that Sontag was even partially closeted is naive, imho. And if the measure of "outness" is newsprint gossip, there were some minor media gossip spits and sputters about Leibovitz leaving her for a younger woman, or having an affair with one -can't remember, don't care - a couple of years or so ago.
Sontag never denied her relationships, sued anyone over exposure or accusations or made a fuss about it one way or the other, and for that, I respected her even more.
Male Chris Crain writes in his article: "I may have had "the big talk" with my parents, but I don't feel the need to bring up my partner in every phone call. The people at the office may know I'm gay and have met my girlfriend, but that doesn't mean I have to bring up the camping trip we took when they ask what I did last weekend."
Girlfriend?
I guess the author's subjective experiences are still causing pronoun and gender confusion in *his* conversation, and it didn't read as the campy exclamation, "Girlfriend!"
- Deborah