Category Archives: Book Reviews
Visual Arts Journal reviews Motel Bizarre
In her new book of staged photographs, Motel Bizarre: Tales from the No Tell Motel, Stephanie Crabe (BFA 2003 Photography) explores that distinctly American institution: the middle-ofnowhere roadside motel. In the book, Crabe investigates the seedier side of these residences of the transient, forgoing the more familiar viewpoint that portrays these places as not much more than cradles of kitsch. Crabe shows Motel Bizarre to be a hidden world of fantasy and sexual deviancy. The images are full of characters who exist on the fringes of society; neo-Nazis, transvestites, prostitutes and hired thugs are just a few of the inhabitants.
While Crabe presents the motel as a place where those who have seemingly no place in
society can indulge any or all of their urges, she does not make it a particularly terrifying place. In fact, Crabe’s photographs show a colorful group of characters that look as if they have finally found a home for their perversities. Housewives carouse with male strippers; a dominatrix and her slave enjoy a little BDSM; and a couple of young lesbian punk rockers are able to escape their families for the night. While attempting to demonstrate the loneliness that comes from transience, Crabe does not look down on these people—instead she turns them into antiheroes from a world that exists outside the margins of familiar society. [CM]
Australia’s “MCV” magazine weighs in on ANDROPHILIA
Visit the page at : http://mcv.e-p.net.au/features/in-pursuit-of-manhood-2798-3.html
In pursuit of manhood
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
The argument for a new gay identity is examined by S.V. Koumakis.
‘Gay is dead.’
So begins Androphilia: a Manifesto by Jack Malebranche, in which the American author expounds his uncompromising views of modern gay identity; and his vision of a masculine ideal of excellence that recalls the warrior ethos of ancient
“The word ‘gay’ describes a whole cultural and political movement that promotes anti-male feminism, victim mentality, and leftist politics,” says Malebranche, who advocates use of the term ‘androphilia’ to express ‘a sexual love and appreciation for men as it is experienced by males’. He also uses the word ‘androphile’ to identify men who desire other men.
The first print run of Androphilia was almost sold out less than a year after its release. Readers’ feedback on Malebranche’s website describes how the book resonated with them. Yet the author has also met with criticism; even accused of homophobia.
“To accept homosexuality in oneself is now equated with accepting an intrinsic effeminacy, and any denial of this is widely believed to be symptomatic of ‘internalised homophobia’ … The real ‘internalised homophobia’ is the belief that you can’t truly be a man simply because you love other men,” Malebranche argues in his manifesto.
The author, who describes himself as “an unrepentant masculinist,” also admits to having once been a go-go dancer in
“I’ve challenged gender constructs. I’ve done drag. I talked the talk and fagged out with the best of them,” he says. “My critique of gay culture doesn’t come from an outsider’s ignorance; it comes from an insider’s knowledge.”
Malebranche, who speaks in his book of his decade-long relationship with his male lover, whom he acknowledges as the most important person in his life, is far from the ‘perfectly vile queer’ his detractors would present him to be. His views, though blunt, are candid and to the point, and his depth of vision is exceptional.
Feminists might claim that Androphilia: a Manifesto encourages men to become misogynists. How would you respond to this?
Androphilia is often labelled ‘misogynist’ because it does not serve a radical feminist agenda. Androphilia does not in any way advocate the abuse of women or hatred of women, and it takes no position on the role of women in society. It is a book written by a man specifically for men.
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Tagged androphilia, homosexuality, jack malebranche, scapegoat publishing
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Gay and Lesbian Times reviews Androphilia
Review: ‘Androphilia’ reclaims the masculine identity
by Matt Moody
Published Thursday, 08-Nov-2007 in issue 1037
“I am not gay.” Jack Malebranche’s first four words hooked me from the start – an epiphany, a rallying call, a simple declarative statement that revoked the emasculating and encapsulating power of the word, “gay.”
As a manifesto, Malebranche’s Androphilia: A Manifesto Rejecting the Gay Identity Reclaiming Masculinity asserts a point of view I’ve long shared which is that despite my personal sexual preferences, I really have very little in common with so-called gay culture – a culture broadcasted, controlled, and encouraged by the Gay Party, a radically leftist group of past counter-cultural rebels who have now congregated into a truly corporate machine, rolling dollar after dollar into special interest legislation bent in one direction, not open to dissent or self-reflection. It’s a party so desperate for normalcy that it ignores the many problems plaguing its own members – a disparate hodgepodge of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender, and myriad other confusing neo-liberal labels too complex and arbitrary to list, a party so hungry for acceptance and inclusion that it consistently seeks approval and acknowledgement from a society that would rather see it disappear.
Androphilia as a concept is a rebuttal of the word gay and everything it connotes and promotes. Per Malebranche, “the word gay describes a whole cultural and political movement that promotes anti-male feminism, victim mentality, and leftist politics … gays stand for the notion that sexuality engenders ethnicity and complete social identity.”
Androphilia, on the other hand, is at once a rejection of the gay identity and its clichéd effeminate stereotype, and reclamation of masculinity via the quest for an authentic masculine identity. Not the uber-queer choose-your-own-form-of-masculine definition, which is often just another way to say effeminate, and not the hyper-masculine invention by leather men and bears which is just another form of drag, but a qualified masculinity based on physical, essential, and cultural elements outlined in the text.
So the book addresses how reclaiming a masculine identity is necessary to counteract the negative and effeminizing forces of modern gay culture. It promotes a masculine ideal of self-reliance, independence, and personal responsibility through achievement, respect, and integrity. Best of all, the author suggests that men should build alliances with other men, including heterosexual men. Androphile men should develop strong relationships with heterosexual men, not just others with the same preference. Because the fact of the matter is, the forces emasculating gay men are doing the same to straight men. If you disagree, think about the political-correctness of metrosexuality and other gender blending in today’s popular culture. The author’s belief is that only through building an alliance with other masculine men will the tide turn in the favor of reclaiming and establishing a masculine identity again, for all men, yet especially for men who love or prefer men – androphiles.
In this age of squalid political correctness, to speak out as a homosexual or androphile against organizations such as the HRC or GLAAD could be equivocated by some as biting the hand that feeds you. However, the named powerful organizations do so little to counteract the negative characteristics and qualities of the loosely knit and contrived communities they represent.
GLAAD glorifies effeminate affectations and representations of gay men as positive developments in the mainstream media. They aren’t. Effeminate gay men on television are like blackface actors in southern theaters during segregation. They do nothing but promote an emasculating stereotype that continues to further weaken gay men in the eyes of heterosexual men. HRC gushes about its achievements in corporations and political campaigns. Each organization touts ephemeral qualities of inclusion, diversity, and the intoxicating idea of equality. Yet anyone who speaks out against either organization out of a sense of pragmatism is castigated, shunned, or patronized for their dissent.
Republican homosexuals are treated as villains. Libertarians are scoffed at. Constitutionalists are trivialized. Anyone who doesn’t agree with a feminist perspective is ridiculed. Masculine-identified men are labeled as internally homophobic. But it is worse than that. The current gay “culture” fosters young adults into a world of designer drugs, materialism, body dysmorphia – bigorexia and anorexia, classism and a plethora of other social maladies.
The community is, in actuality, a disaggregated and forced collection of people who frankly don’t really like each other that much. Nor should they. If you disagree, ask a lesbian how much she really likes going to a circuit party – and perhaps she could take the kids, too! Ask a military officer how comfortable he or she would feel on a Pride float. Proud of what? The GLBT alphabet soup with all of its anti-war Democrats? Or proud of their service to the country, which seems to matter to gays only if you reached veteran status and came out? Online profiles for horny gay men tout list after list of racial, HIV-status, age, money and political preferences. Gay bars are segregated along the same lines. Do we really have that much in common, or are we just pretending to?
The author studies and criticizes the rationale behind the research of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and his urning theory on homosexuality and argues instead that there should be a more libertarian approach to sexuality, the same approach that resulted in the decriminalization of sodomy laws in the Western world. Greek culture, Roman warriors, and other non-gay forms of male relationships are examined to contrast with the current anti-masculine gay sexuality.
Another critical point in the book is how men who disavow gay culture should also remove themselves from what he believes is a culture of victimization and being the underdog. He asserts that if someone defines themselves by their travails, they will never truly be free of them. Most GLBT people these days haven’t faced that much harassment, if any, so gay culture continues to promote a victim mentality even in those who have never been victims.
Personally, the vindication I feel in reading this book is that finally, finally, another gay man is advocating what I’ve believed for years: the belief that men who admire or love men should be more responsible, not give into the effeminate gay cultural fad, avoid the personal, career, and social pitfalls common to those who live in a completely emasculated world, and build stronger ties with heterosexual men who share common interests.
I agree. I am not gay, either. I’m an androphile.
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Drub’s World reviews Androphilia
From Drub’s World
Androphilia – A Review
Filed under: Books — Drub @ 12:54 am
Androphilia by Jack Malebrache
I took my time wallowing with giddy enthusiasm in the heady passages that have enflamed many reviewers and people who patently missed the point of the book known as Androphilia: A Manifesto. Anything that makes people that upset has to be doing something right as this is usually a signal that it’s making people think uncomfortable things about themselves and the world around them that they’ve lazily accepted.
More importantly, Jack Malebrache’s book is unapologetically about reclaiming sexuality and defining male-to-male sexual relations and ideal relationships that are bound in that and what it all means – selfishly and more importantly without the prejudices and castrating influences of Feminism and The Gay Movement.
It’s a liberating read, empowering each person who reads it (should they not slip into comfortable paths of victimhood) to accept, define, and move past convention. While I can see how people could easily jump to conclusions and call this book a manifesto born out of self-loathing, but then they’d be doing a disservice to the words, message and ultimately themselves.
This would be old thinking – or simply victim mentality. Androphilia has a fresh, often objective, view that asks us to reexamine masculinity, and forces us to challenge ourselves and our place in the world. In reading Androphilia, we are asked to challenge the concept that sexuality isn’t a biologically determined construct, but a chosen one, sighting that we didn’t choose to be straight but chose to find happiness in the company of men. Secondly, we are to face the gay community and give it a big middle finger for dictating how we should behave, what we should believe, and how to assume a “gay identity”. Powerful, powerful stuff which is something I totally understand and respect why these are important steps in taking off the yoke of the Gay Party and cease being victims and nicely dovetails with all the bullshit I personally had umbrage with when the gay bar rags and other gay publications wrote about “gay skinheads” citing me and my friends as something that “doesn’t exist” because we didn’t fit neatly into a cute, inoffensive pink box.
Androphilia confirms and embraces everything that men who are sick of the gay community are out there looking for and everyone should read it, regardless of where our affections lie.
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Sacramento Bee article on Stephen Kasner
Find the full article with photos and more at The Sacramento Bee!
Visions in the dark
Stephen Kasner’s art (call it ‘creepy-mysterious’) has lots of fans. But it isn’t for everyone.
By Rachel Leibrock – rleibrock@sacbee.com
At the time, it stung. But Stephen Kasner now remembers the moment with a rueful laugh.It was a summer evening in 2004, and Kasner was making his Second Saturday debut at the Exploding Head Gallery on 12th Street.
Hanging back in the shadows, the Cleveland expat watched as a 60-something couple examined his paintings – including one of a giant, macabre, dark-hued oil on canvas titled “Woman With Arm.”
The female patron tilted her head one way, then another. She stepped up close to get a better view, then moved several feet back for a different perspective.
Finally, she declared: “No, I just don’t like anything about it.”
Nothing.
“It would have been a relief if she’d liked the colors or technique,” Kasner says, retelling the story recently.
“But she couldn’t find a thing. She just hated it. That was my trial by fire.”
Welcome to Sacramento.
Of course, Kasner, 37, hasn’t let such an inauspicious beginning stand in his way. Three years ago, he moved to Sacramento with his wife, Rebecca, and 11-year-old daughter, Madeleine, to be closer to Rebecca’s family.
He even likes it here, he says. Even if the city doesn’t quite get his bleakly enigmatic sensibilities, which he has showcased around the world.
His works are also famous among fans of underground heavy-metal music, with a new oversized coffee-table book, “Stephen Kasner WORKS: 1993-2006″ (Scapegoat Publishing, $29.95, 160 pages), chronicling his oeuvre.
So, Kasner is confident that local art aficionados will, eventually, open up to his efforts.
“At least (the woman at the Exploding Head Gallery) tried,” Kasner reasons. “I was just happy that she put forth some kind of effort. She wasn’t blatantly disgusted; she didn’t just walk away.”
And that’s a start.
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Gay and Lesbian Review – Reviews Androphilia
The Gay and Lesbian Review features a review of Androphilia in their September-October 2007 issue. Luckily we own ScapegoatPress.com for when people get confused about our name.
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Midwest Book Review – Androphilia is “Highly Recommended”
Midwest Book Review weighs in on Androphilia by Jack Malebranche.
Androphilia
Jack Malebranche
Scapegoat Publishing
15608 S. New Century Drive, Gardena, CA 90248
9780976403586, $12.95 www.SCBDistributors.comJack Malebranche, the author of Androphilia: A Manifesto Rejecting the Gay Identity Reclaiming Masculinity, is a bisexual man who prefers the company of and sexual relations with men – to the extent that he shares a long-term sexual and personal bond with another man. Yet he emphatically rejects the label “gay” because in today’s culture the concept of “gay” has become intermingled with the concepts of feminization, abandoning masculinity, underachievement, and irresponsibility to the lengths of false victimhood. Androphilia: A Manifesto rejects the baggage-laden gay identity, and calls for humankind to recognize homosexual desire as apolitical. “The Gay Party tells us that we homosexuals must band together to fight against high-school bullies, and to encourage kids to ‘come out’ and ghettoize themselves into little gay support groups where they can become conversant in Party dogma and avoid ever having to learn to deal effectively with their straight peers… The Gay Party insists we learn that we are victims of heterosexual oppression, and imagine that everyone is out to get us.” Malebranche prefers to substitute the word “androphile” for “gay” to describe himself, as he is an unrepentant advocate of the positive aspects of masculinity and male culture. Androphilia: A Manifesto does not attack or criticize those men (homosexual or heterosexual) who want to emulate effeminate qualities. The crux of matter is not that men should be forced to be manly, but rather that the majority of them simply are manly, and should not be pressured by the gay culture to despise or reject their masculinity. Nor should a man’s sexuality automatically define his hobbies, his politics, his interests, or who can or cannot be his friends. Though readers, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, may not agree with all Androphilia has to say, Androphilia is invaluable for its core messages of being self-reliant and true to oneself, and for its frank discussion of whether “gay marriage” (as opposed to less radical measures like domestic partnerships, which are more likely to be successfully accepted nationwide) is needed at all to govern same-sex relationships incapable of producing children who are the biological offspring of both parents. Highly recommended.
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The Cleveland Free Times coverage of “Stephen Kasner: Works 1993-2006″
From the "Summer Reading” cover article
Volume 15, Issue 12
Published July 25th, 2007
Summer Reading
Excerpts From Five New Books By Cleveland Artists And Writers
With so much attention paid to what doesn’t happen in Cleveland, it’s easy to overlook what does. Every day around Northeast Ohio, in studios and coffee shops and spare bedrooms, creative people write and illustrate their passions. The “Summer Reading” issue is our way of honoring and promoting the work of a few such people with local roots, some still living here and some who have moved on; some long known to us and some we’ve just met…
“Just another dark and trippy CIA grad.” That’s what some justifiably forgotten freelance hack called Stephen Kasner in the pages of this very publication about 10 years ago. As a fellow CIA grad, a friend of Kasner’s and an enthusiastic fan of his work, I was a few clicks beyond miffed. The incredible thoughtfulness and complexity of the man was and is vividly evident in his canvasses, simultaneously gloomy and luminous, and to caricature him as a typical art-school goth dipshit was unthinkable. After having been a gallery fixture here for a decade, Kasner made a move to Northern California in 2004, which brought his work the attention a Cleveland artist can rarely hope for. He’s now the subject of a monograph from Baltimore’s Scapegoat Publishing (scapegoatpublishing.com), a beautifully printed book that shows Kasner’s damn-near irreproduceable work in the best light possible – would that newsprint could do it such justice. With introductions by Integrity vocalist Dwid Helion, Free Times art writer Douglas Max Utter (who clearly should have been the one to write about that show 10 years ago), and Kasner himself (excerpted below), Stephen Kasner: Works 1993-2006 is the must-have Cleveland art book – at least until someone finally honors Derek Hess thusly. -Ron Kretsch
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Heathen Harvest reviews Androphilia
The “industrial underground” webzine Heathen Harvest has posted a very positive review of Jack Malebranche’s Androphilia.
Jack Malebranche was certainly not looking to make friends within the worldwide and ever expanding “Gay Community” when he set about writing Androphilia. Much like the massive upheaval of Lutheranism, Androphilia threatens to collapse the “Gay Identity” in upon itself revealing a new ideal by which to lead the homosexual community forward. Jack has come to liberate homosexual men from the trappings of sissydom by revealing the inherent but largely shunned masculinity in many homosexual males.
Written like a man impassioned to rescue his people who have been led astray to wander a barren and desolate domain divorced from their very nature Jack rains down blow after blow on “Gay Culture” breaking away the definitions and inhibitions of social and political agendas revealing the raw and undiscovered force of the true homosexual male identity. It comes as no surprise that such an ambitious declaration would find a home with Scapegoat Publishing whose motto reads “Blame Us.” No doubt with a title like roots. Androphilia – A Manifesto “Rejecting The Gay Identity, Reclaiming Masculinity most of the magazines and publishers within the “Queer Press” would find Jack’s revolutionary ideas to be a threat to their investment in “Gay Culture.”
So what is Jack really attempting with Androphilia and is he successful? With so many books attempting to hand homosexual men theories on identity, community, sexuality, etc. is Androphilia a revealing or relevant voice in the din of self help books and feel good declarations of homosexual elitism? Testifying as a man loving homosexual I am compelled to declare this as one of the most relevant books on the subject of homosexuality that I have ever read.
The full review can be found here:Heathen Harvest reviews Androphilia by Jack Malebranche
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