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States of Desire Revisited: Travels in Gay America

Book by Edmund White · 7 quotes · Way, Gay, Adolescence

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States of Desire Revisited: Travels in Gay America Quotes

“Do we regard language as more public, more ceremonial, than thought? Just as family men condemn the profanity on the stage that they use constantly in conversation, in the same way we may look to written language as an idealization rather than a reflection of ourselves.”

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Book:States of Desire Revisited: Travels in Gay America
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“The scorn directed against drags is especially virulent; they have become the outcasts of gay life, the "queers" of homosexuality.In fact, they are classic scapegoats. Our old fears about our sissiness, still with us though masked by the new macho fascism, are now located, isolated, quarantined through our persecution of the transvestite.”

StillsFactsGayClassicFascismIsolatedDragHomosexualityPersecutionScornOutcastMachoScapegoatTransvestitesGay Life
Book:States of Desire Revisited: Travels in Gay America
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“San Francisco is where gay fantasies come true, and the problem the city presents is whether, after all, we wanted these particular dreams to be fulfilled--or would we have preferred others? Did we know what price these dreams would exact? Did we anticipate the ways in which, vivid and continuous, they would unsuit us for the business of daily life? Or should our notion of daily life itself be transformed?”

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Book:States of Desire Revisited: Travels in Gay America
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“The almost Oriental politeness of the West Coast is one of its distinctive regional features, in marked contrast to the contentiousness of the East Coast.... So few human contacts in Los Angeles go unmediated by glass (either a TV screen or an automobile windshield), that the direct confrontation renders the participants docile, stunned, sweet.”

HumansSweetTvsDirectWestGlassesEastScreensContactFeaturesLos AngelesContrastCoastAutomobileConfrontationPolitenessParticipantsDistinctiveStunnedWest CoastEast CoastDocile
Book:States of Desire Revisited: Travels in Gay America
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