Jess from UofW was one of the 15-20 first openly gay, lesbian and bisexual users (the Cabal) of internet - using usenet's soc.motss (Members Of The Same Sex) just as internet emerged in its current form. Usenet was the forerunner of every social media and publishing system in operation today.
Only a handful of us are still alive. We came from Caltech, MIT, Stanford, University of Wisconsin, University of Toronto, Princeton, Harvard, Rensselaer, Berkeley, Johns-Hopkins, Bell Labs, Silicon Graphics, NASA/JPL, IRCAM, and a few other spots in the US.
The "cabal" was made up of several women, a lot of men, a gay father and his daugher, and several bisexuals. We knew the readership was huge even back in 1981-2-3, because we all had many private email conversations with people who were afraid of commenting publicly. ISP's and private email was yet to exist. Homosexual sex was still in many states in the US.
While PC world was coming into view, HIV was stil raging as internet emerged.
[ Total aside:
I "married" the most prominent bisexual woman on the internet in the early 90's during a trip to the US while I was living in Paris. She was actually the partner of Richard Stallman at the time. It was at a private house party event a friend of mine gave me and my French boyfriend at Harvard, along with many professors, students, and decorative gay men. I had some notoriety at the time, which continued up through the late 2000's with sightingts regularly reported.
I can vividly visualize the event still: She was slender, spectral and radiant in a black long-sleeved Lycra dress and shoulder length black hair, and I recall being near naked in gay-friendly bulging aubergine Lycra shorts and gold llame squeezed muscles, with my prodigious gold beard. Addams Family meets disco Grizzly Adams. We exchanged onyx rings. Several of us had put tiny squares of paper (furnished by a gay NYC Deadhead friend and his lesbian wife) saturated with delightful substances under our tongue before the event. It lasted well into the early hours of the morning... Those were the days. Happily my "spouse" is still alive.
University of Wisconsin was one of the very first institutions to publish acceptable “politically correct” institutional language, back around 1985/1986. It was risible then and is risible now, and in many ways started the ball rolling to where we are now.
A group of the original gay core of all internet on soc.motss within Usenet read it, and made fun of it after it was shared by a man named Jess Anderson, who was part of the staff at UofW. Little did we know how the cancer would spread.
I think common sense provides a better guide than guidance coming from the Death-Star.
Jess from UofW was one of the 15-20 first openly gay, lesbian and bisexual users (the Cabal) of internet - using usenet's soc.motss (Members Of The Same Sex) just as internet emerged in its current form. Usenet was the forerunner of every social media and publishing system in operation today.
Only a handful of us are still alive. We came from Caltech, MIT, Stanford, University of Wisconsin, University of Toronto, Princeton, Harvard, Rensselaer, Berkeley, Johns-Hopkins, Bell Labs, Silicon Graphics, NASA/JPL, IRCAM, and a few other spots in the US.
The "cabal" was made up of several women, a lot of men, a gay father and his daugher, and several bisexuals. We knew the readership was huge even back in 1981-2-3, because we all had many private email conversations with people who were afraid of commenting publicly. ISP's and private email was yet to exist. Homosexual sex was still in many states in the US.
While PC world was coming into view, HIV was stil raging as internet emerged.
[ Total aside:
I "married" the most prominent bisexual woman on the internet in the early 90's during a trip to the US while I was living in Paris. She was actually the partner of Richard Stallman at the time. It was at a private house party event a friend of mine gave me and my French boyfriend at Harvard, along with many professors, students, and decorative gay men. I had some notoriety at the time, which continued up through the late 2000's with sightingts regularly reported.
I can vividly visualize the event still: She was slender, spectral and radiant in a black long-sleeved Lycra dress and shoulder length black hair, and I recall being near naked in gay-friendly bulging aubergine Lycra shorts and gold llame squeezed muscles, with my prodigious gold beard. Addams Family meets disco Grizzly Adams. We exchanged onyx rings. Several of us had put tiny squares of paper (furnished by a gay NYC Deadhead friend and his lesbian wife) saturated with delightful substances under our tongue before the event. It lasted well into the early hours of the morning... Those were the days. Happily my "spouse" is still alive.
]
University of Wisconsin was one of the very first institutions to publish acceptable “politically correct” institutional language, back around 1985/1986. It was risible then and is risible now, and in many ways started the ball rolling to where we are now.
A group of the original gay core of all internet on soc.motss within Usenet read it, and made fun of it after it was shared by a man named Jess Anderson, who was part of the staff at UofW. Little did we know how the cancer would spread.
I think common sense provides a better guide than guidance coming from the Death-Star.