Hey All!
Wanted to let you know that we haven't forgotten about you.
There have been many changes at the Jewish Journal Online, and especially for the “Oy Gay” blog, so posts have not been consistent for the past year or so. However, I am happy to say that I look forward to blogging for you all again more regularly, starting November 2013.
In the meanwhile, have a safe and fun Halloween. It is pretty gay, afterall. 'Twas thinking to myself about the forthcoming Halloween tomorrow when I started to think about how queer this “holiday” really is.
I did some internet searching and stumbled upon ” target=”_blank”>West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval (which attracts up to 500,000 revelers), as having origins in historic San Francisco. More importantly, these parties have also helped to bring Queerness into a more public forum, whether the attendees are LGBT or not, and have also brought to the forefront a more expressively open generation of adults over time.
Nicholas Rogers, author of Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, points out that while Halloween is enjoyed by everyone, “it has been the Gay community that has most flamboyantly exploited Halloween's potential as a transgressive festival, as one that operates outside or on the margins of orthodox time, space, and hierarchy. Indeed, it is the Gay community that has been arguably most responsible for Halloween's adult rejuvenation.”
With that said, Halloween can be a time of excess and debauchery. As enlightening of an experience as that may be for some as, say, being a heterosexual male expressing himself in a dress and wig, or a normally vanilla female dom-ing it up for the evening, no one likes to babysit [their 21+ friends] on Halloween…
So, make sure, whatever you do, wherever you end up celebrating on October 31st, you make it fun and remember, Safety Third!
See you next month…
