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Jesse Monteagudo's Book Nook
By Jeff Dawson
Gay & Lesbian Online: Your Indispensable Guide to Cruising the Queer Web by Jeff Dawson; Third Edition; Alyson Books; 539 pages; $17.95.
The development of the Internet and the World Wide Web was a godsend
for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Thanks to the Web and
the Net queer people can now communicate, educate, organize, entertain and
titillate ourselves and one another in relative privacy, and in the comfort
of our own homes or offices.
Folks like myself, who seldom travel, can reach out and be part of the LGBT universe. With just a computer and a modem, the world is literally at our fingertips. And what a world! In my relatively short time browsing the Web, I've come across literally hundreds of Web sites, dealing with every person, place, issue and topic imaginable, from domestic partner legislation to Ricky Martin's sexuality.
Most of you could probably come up with an equally lengthy and diverse list that reflects your own tastes and predilections. And this is just the tip of the cyber-iceberg. In 1996, Jeff Dawson tried to make sense out of all this mess by compiling a guide to gay and lesbian guide online.
The result is Gay & Lesbian Online, which is now in its third edition: "Written
for novices and veterans alike, this enlarged and expanded edition maps the phenomenal
growth of queer cyberspace and encompasses heart-of-the-matter issues like
activism, domestic partners, and sex, as well as lesser urgencies such as
how to wear stiletto heels on formal occasions."
Gay & Lesbian Online has grown with each edition, and now lists over 3,300 Web sites. Though Dawson's book is no longer the sole guide to the queer Web-- Richard Laermer's Get On With It is just one of the wannabes --it remains the first and best. Gay & Lesbian Online lists the Web sites by major categories, from "Activism & Civil Rights" to "Youth". If you know what you are looking for (sort of), you can go into the proper category and look for the appropriate site. Or if you are like me, who likes to stumble from link to link, you might want to start with one of the major search engines, like GayZoo or Queer Resources Directory, and go on from there.
Though most sites are plainly listed, a few important or original ones - like Queer Resources
Directory and the Front Runners, just to name a couple - rate more detailed
descriptions. Like everything else, Gay & Lesbian Online is highly
subjective, and reflects the author's own interests.
Though Gay & Lesbian Online is quite useful, it has its limitations. While listing the Web sites by category might be the only realistic way to do so, it is not convenient enough for those who are in a hurry, nor interesting enough for those who like to take their time and browse. For my money, I find it more expedient to go into a major search engine --like GayScape or Rainbow Query-- than wade through the pages of this book. Even worse, Gay & Lesbian Online inevitably suffers the fate of all directories, especially one that deals with such a volatile field as the Web. In other words, the book was obsolete from the day it was published; a few old sites already "died" and many more new sites were "born". A fourth edition - and there will surely be one - will surely make the necessary additions, deletions and corrections, and will just as likely be obsolete from the moment it sees the light of day. Such is life online. Still, as an introduction to the queer Web, Gay & Lesbian Online is an interesting resource. Even those who don't use it to find a site will enjoy Dawson's informative essays and comments about queer cyberspace. Sometimes the reader will find a gem, as I did when I read Dawson's essay about Queer Resources Directory, one of our community's most essential sites. If anything, Gay & Lesbian Online will make the Web less frightening to those who are just getting acclimated, and more valuable for those of us who have already taken the plunge. Book Nook News:
The Pulitzer Prize, America's most prestigious
journalistic and literary prize, is seldom relevant to lesbian, gay,
bisexual or transgender people. This is all the more reason to laud the
decision to give this year's Pulitzer Prize in Fiction to The Hours (Farrar
Straus Giroux), Michael Cunningham's tribute to Virginia Woolf's classic
Mrs. Dalloway.
The Hours is the first LGBT-oriented fiction to win the Pulitzer since Alice Walker's The Color Purple did so back in 1983. (Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina, which richly deserved the Prize, did not get it, perhaps because of its unsavory subject matter.) This is the second major award for The Hours, which already won this year's Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Book Award for Literature. If all goes well, The Hours will go on to win its third award, a Lambda Literary Award in Gay Men's Fiction. |
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