14 Quotes by Martin Duberman

Gay men know a lot more about sexual responsiveness, and the erotic potential of their bodies, particularly of their nipples and assholes, than straight men.

The main goal here is to make ourselves “familiar enough” to straight people to win their acceptance. But why should that be of paramount importance? Precisely why would we want to do ourselves over in their image? To become more like them would be to forget our own singular history and the special insights and perspectives that derive from it, giving us, as spies in the culture, a unique perspective for evaluating and critiquing aspects of mainstream culture.

Humanitarian concerns are always dismissed as impractical, at least initially.Humanitarian concerns, however, aren’t high on the national gay movement’s list of priorities; if they were, we’d hear a lot more from them than we do about the inequities that derive from race, class, and gender.

A host of other matters that affect the lives of many LGBTQ people—among them, health care, senior centers, immigration, poverty, homelessness, diet, and education—are currently given short shrift. Even those issues still being partially addressed, like hate crime legislation, are of uncertain relevance (and even potential harm) to much of the queer population.

A whole new genre really, that portrays the improved public perception of LGBTQ people in hyperbolic terms skirting dangerously close to parody.

A quote from the London Gay Liberation Front Manifesto: 'The ultimate success of all forms of oppression is our self-oppression. Self-oppression is achieved when the gay person has adopted and internalised straight people’s definition of what is good and bad.

Some unknown but apparently significant number of both homosexual and heterosexual couples do seem to believe that sex is hottest with comparative strangers and love is the property of emotional trust and intimacy.

These days, especially within queer theory’s hallowed halls, sexual “fluidity” has become something of a talisman for personal authenticity.

A “successful” relationship is best defined not as one that sustains erotic intensity but rather one that helps to soften the brute fact that we’re alone in this world—and will leave it.