Winter Vacation

I'm going to take a couple of weeks off from the blog over the winter vacation in a bid to re-charge my batteries. For students reading this blog, don't forget you can use the search function on this blog (top left corner) to search the archive. Good look with assignment 1!

If you missed the last workshop, we covered all the material on gender and finished off the subject of identity by exploring language and communication. All the materials are or will shortly be on SunSpace so take a look. In the new year we will kick off with history before moving on to gay marriage, violence & sexuality and finally inter-generational sex. As indicated on your timetables, the first workshop back will be on Thursday 15 January.

To everyone who reads the blog, have a great Christmas and/or winter break (for those northern hemisphere readers). See you all in the New Year!

The UN & Decriminalising Homosexuality

The BBC is reporting this morning that Sixty-six countries at the United Nations have called for homosexuality to be decriminalised. However 60 more countries rejected the claim stating it should be down to individual nations. There's been a lot of celebration and discussion about the UN Declaration on Human Rights in the last couple of weeks (which celebrated 60 years last week) but news stories such as this must surely remind us how utterly ineffectual the UN remains in many areas of human rights. We are not talking about gay marriage/partnerships/unions, adoption rights, IVF rights, anti-discrimination laws, age of consent laws, unequal censorship laws; rather, we are talking about de-criminalising homosexuality. Preventing states from banging someone in a cell because of their sexuality.

All that said, it's easy for us to forget that in the UK homosexuality was only de-criminalised in England and Wales in 1967, Scotland in 1980 and Northern Ireland in 1982 so from the perspective of those states (more often than not Arab or African) that now resit moves to bring in such a measure, western nationals are hardly approaching this issue with clean hands. That so called 'leader of the free world', America, is hardly a shining beacon of gay rights.

Law and Society

I've just returned from the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand Annual Conference in Sydney. I went along with a colleague from Sunderland, Ben Livings who was speaking on Sports Law whilst I delivered a paper exploring my own recent male for male sex work research which I'm hoping will be published in the New Year. The weather was a bit of a shock and so as illustration I offer the first pic taken from my study on the Thursday before I flew out and then a picture of myself (on the right) and Ben in Sydney (which though grey was an improvement). I've reproduced the abstract in full below:

Male for Male Sex Work and the Internet Effect:
A UK Perspective

The criminal law in England and Wales relating to sex work was last modified by the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Three years later in January 2006 the UK Government published a 'prostitution strategy' that set out a number of core aims: the overall reduction in street prostitution; improve the safety and quality of life of communities affected by prostitution, including those directly involved in street sex markets, and finally, to reduce all forms of commercial sexual exploitation. This framework prima facie failed to take into account both the issue of male sex work and also the Internet effect upon sex work. This paper seeks to examine the intersection of technology and male for male sex work and reviews both the criminal law and UK policy framework within the wider UK human rights context.

The Essential Dykes

Alison Bechdel was interviewed in the Guardian yesterday. It's really an interview to flog a new book - The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For' but makes for interesting reading.

Lesbilicious

Described as 'the web's tastiest lesbian magazine', Lesbilicious can be viewed at lesbilicious.co.uk and has a range of news items targeted at lesbian and bisexual women.

Bent Magazine: December Issue

The December issue of Bent Magazine has been published. You can view the issue here. There's a brilliant story about the gay penguins in it.

World AIDS Day 2008

Today marks World AIDS Day. The North East event is taking place next Saturday and details are below:

EYES OPEN, WORLD AIDS DAY EVENT - SATURDAY 6th DECEMBER
This event is open to everyone and will start with a gathering at 11.45am next to Gray's Monument, Newcastle City Centre. People will then march down Gray Street and Dean Street accompanied by a band of drummers, the march will then move along the quayside and over the Millennium Bridge before arriving at Baltic Square in time for 1,000 red balloons to be released.Entertainment, speeches and a time for remembrance will then begin at 1pm within the Sage Building.For more information about this event contact:MESMAC North East on 0191 233 1333.

You may also want to look at a brilliant US documentary series called 'In the Life' which can be viewed here.

San Francisco Field Trip: 77 Days to Go!

It should have been 80 days but I've been crazy busy the last few days. Last Wednesday I had the privilege of speaking to the new Law School at York University about using blogging in teaching (and talking about this very blog) and then on Friday I went to the most fantastic conference called 'Becoming or Unbecoming? Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Research in the 21st Century', more details here. I presented some of my research on public sex which seemed to have a good response I met some brilliant people.

Anyway, no with the 77 days countdown. I've given in to shameless tourist/recruitment promo's with these two videos. The first focuses on San Fran and the second is probably familiar to a few of you and focuses on California.





You also get a lot of home made videos on YouTube but I quite like this aerial tour one. They also provide a list of when the key sights are:

Highlights of video 1:Monster Park (Candlestick Park) - 4:15AT&T Park - 6:45Bay Bridge - 6:58TransAmerica Pyramid - 7:40Coit Tower - 8:04Fisherman's Wharf - 8:15



Finally, this video provided me with my first memorable view of the Castro District, featuring in the BBC series Michael Palin: Full Circle. Embedding has been disabled but you can view it here. You can also see a brilliant website to accompany the series which includes the text of the book. You can view the start of the SF pages here. Click 'next page' to continue reading about SF.

You might also want to look at this blog which details 'off-beat' attractions around SF: http://visitsanfrancisco.blogspot.com/